


Demons

by CynaraM



Series: Friendship is Unnecessary [5]
Category: Johannes Cabal - Jonathan L. Howard
Genre: Angst, Canon Era, Drama, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Humor, Occult
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-03-29 16:42:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3903442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CynaraM/pseuds/CynaraM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leonie is the unenviable patient of Herr Cabal as they attempt to deal with her preternatural health issue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In which Leonie and Cabal brood

She had come home a dawn and a day and a dusk ago. The doctor had come and gone, and she sat with her father, having a conversation she’d been avoiding for more than a year. 

“Is Cabal to blame?"

“No. It wasn’t his fault. He rescued me, dad.” And then buggered off as usual, she thought. She lay on the sofa, wrapped in blankets and supported by pillows. A cup of tea steamed at an end table drawn up to her elbow. The lamp behind the sofa was turned up to full, and another had been placed on the bookcase. 

“Have you seen Cabal since the matter with the aeroship?"

She paused. This was going to cost him a sleepless night or two. “Yes. Several times."

***

To be fair, Cabal had not been thinking about making a dramatic exit. He had simply headed for the shadows before circling around to make sure the rendezvous occurred. Leonie was as tall as her father; he’d not noticed before. Of course, he had been preoccupied with extorting one of their souls when he’d last seen them together. Cabal watched the look on Barrow's face as he hurried towards her, then turned and left before the explanations started. 

His pleasure with the neatness of the scheduling almost overshadowed his misgivings. It had fit, like a hand in a glove, or a fairie into a coffee tin. Leonie Barrow was under the best care he could have arranged, and Frank Barrow would be distracted caring for her. Meanwhile, he planned to keep clear of Penlow. No doubt Barrow could smooth over his daughter's unexpected return. They could tell what story they liked. He thought Leonie would keep him out of it.

The bedrooms of his house were full of dreadful things. More dreadful things than usual, he qualified mentally, both in quality and quantity. His preparations against the invasion of the house had been vigorous. He wasn't going to attempt to clear the first floor until after he'd had some food and sleep but the kitchen required immediate attention.

Cabal mused. He laid down a cloth to kneel upon, then used a rag dampened with mineral spirits to dab away the arcane sigils he had inscribed on the kitchen tile not three days ago. 

Was it possible for him to find room for other loyalties? He would not have thought so, but thus far Leonie had made it easy. And he had… He had made exceptions for her. He avoided quantifying his behaviour any more precisely.

***

Frank Barrow sipped from his glass of brandy. He was not much of a drinker, but Leonie’s news had given him a chill. He tried to rally. "I met his brother Horst at the carnival. Odd… man. But… good, perhaps? He didn’t want any part of his brother’s business."

“Horst. I’ve seen the name, but you never mentioned…. I suppose you and I haven’t talked about the carnival much."

“I could have killed him, then."

“Really, dad?” Her question was not rhetorical. She sat up under her swathes of shawls and looked hard at his face. 

“Yes. Well. What good would it have done? I hated him, sweetheart, and I could hate him still. I wish I knew why he’d done it. And why he gave the contract back. But I’ve never had to kill anyone.” He was taking this remarkably well, he thought. Perhaps he could risk a question. "What is my daughter doing mixed up in something with Mr. Cabal?"

She lifted her chin. “Nothing you’d be ashamed of."

“No. I know that. I know that." And he knelt by the sofa, put an arm around her shoulders, and silently, grudgingly, blessed Johannes Cabal for coming after his Leonie. 

And then it was time to go to bed. She went upstairs, and he extinguished the lamps, checked the doors and windows, and resisted a second brandy.

***

Cabal worked his way down the stairs and through the cellar, collecting, dismantling, and erasing his defences as appropriate.

The spring chill of the second cellar called the Dee Society prison to mind. In his mind's eye he saw through the floor to her lying below. He needed to be sure. He stripped to his shirtsleeves and raised the stone; she was there still. He thought of Leonie on her chilly narrow cot in the dungeon - but the woman below was beyond reach and beyond all comfort. Cabal drew his overcoat close and lay down for a second cold night in a narrow bed. 

****  
****

A month later, the Barrow home in Penlow on Thurse was filled with light. New lamps elbowed photographs and books for space on the tables, but Leonie was in her bedroom. She was lying in bed, staring at the pattern her lace curtains cast on the walls. Her father knocked on her open door. “I’ve decided to go,” he said.

“Really. Well, that’s nice. Have a lovely time.” Her tone twisted from bored to barbed. “I’ll try not to get into too much trouble. Perhaps you should have the neighbours look in on me."

Barrow smiled. “Just try to stop Mr. Wilton from checking in."

Leonie felt heartsick. He was trying so hard, and she had been absolutely hateful. If she wasn’t sulking, she was lashing out. If she wasn’t lashing out, she was crying. She tried to keep it all to herself, but she couldn’t help it. She gave him a half-smile as a sort of apology, but that was the best she could do. If only he would go! “It’s a few nights. I’ll be fine.” She sighed and lay down again and he left. She was behaving like a damned teenager, and she was hurting him. Maybe if he left, she would get better. 

She had not recovered. She was still in Penlow; it had been agreed by her father and the administration that she should rest for the summer term and come back in the autumn. Leonie had said little. She rarely passed the gate around the house, in fact; she gardened and cooked, but she spent a great deal of time in her bedroom alone. She wrote no letters. The school forwarded a large envelope of mail which she took up to her bedroom and did not open. 

Everything was dim and blurred. The doctor said it was her pupils; the muscles controlling the dilation must have frozen. Time might unfreeze them. Her father had retained an oculist, who had offered blue spectacles with side-baffles. Her laughing fit had lasted five minutes, but it had held a hysterical note.

She tried to be normal. She read to him and they laughed and she kissed him good night before going up to bed. But there were flashes of bitterness and anger she couldn't contain. 

Depression, said the family doctor to Frank Barrow over a quiet pint one night. Barrow, who knew rather more (but not, he suspected, all) about Leonie’s imprisonment thought she needed quiet time to heal, and let her be in the warm silence he could give her. 

***

Cabal looked out a window with a cup of cold tea. His work had been going well. The latest test batch, incorporating some elements from the experiment that had so discomposed Leonie, had been moderately promising - in the sense of not being as utter a failure as usual. He inadvertantly calculated how long it might take to achieve his objective at his current rate of progress. Again. The number of years varied slightly based on resources and significant breakthroughs or setbacks, but it always came out depressingly long. 

He recalled the first time he had seen Leonie Barrow, at the end of that dreadful and desperate year. How he had stood inert, inwardly demented, while she walked, smiled at an acquaintence, and greeted her father affectionately. He had seen nothing but a dead woman. He wondered what he might have done if he'd had his soul. It was obscurely embarrassing to remember this now. Even then, part of his mind had been searching for differences and had found them. Height. A small variation in the distance between the eyes. Voice, for which he was wholeheartedly thankful. 

After his first mad thoughts had passed, she was no-one else but herself, which was a relief. It had seemed just possible that Satan had somehow learned things Cabal hoped he had hidden even from the Prince of This World, and he had wondered if he was equal to the temptation.

Now he wondered if Horst had seen Leonie at the carnival. He, surely, would have been just as astonished, but there had been little time for discussion. Horst would have spared him the shock if he could, even then. Oh, Horst. Cabal sipped his cold tea. 

He had cleared the chessboard and put the pieces away. Eventually, setting up the pieces after dusting had felt futile. He could remember the layout if he needed it. He had rescued the damned woman, and she hadn’t even mailed her next move. Johannes Cabal was not a man much given to angst, but from time to time the bleakness of his existence obtruded itself upon his notice. 

And for Leonie Barrow, the days were put neatly in separate boxes that did not overlap and did not vary, while she turned the same questions over in her mind. Until one day, she found a necromancer in her kitchen.


	2. In which Leonie breaks one of her mother's teacups.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tea. And lack of sympathy.

He drank assam for one at the oilcloth-covered kitchen table. He had made enough noise making it; he had started to wonder if she was home. Barrow had boarded the train an hour ago. 

Leonie studied him for a moment, then went to the sink, ran water into the kettle, and put it on the stove to boil. She took out the Earl Grey and started another pot. Cabal sipped. 

When it was brewing she sat down across from him. “At least last time you knocked."

“Last time I needed to be invited in. Or I would have been killed by fairies."

The silence stretched. Leonie poured her tea. “I never thanked you for coming to get me."

Cabal sipped. “I had strong reasons to do so.” She played with an egg-timer. Her eyes were pinpricks of black and wide blue irises. She didn’t drink her tea. “I thought you would be back at school by now."

“I’m taking the summer term to recover."

“And by recover, you mean clutter up Penlow feeling sorry for yourself.” Deliberately, he added, "If your father had given up this quickly when I held a gun to your head, things might have turned out very differently."

Her eyes narrowed. “To the devil with you, Cabal."

“It’s been tried,” he said, with pardonable pride.

“And to the devil with your smug attitude and your… I’m not you.” She was getting angry.

“Obviously.” He saturated the word with as much insult as he could. 

Leonie looked Cabal in the eye, picked up his delicately flowered teacup and threw it against the wall. It shattered into needlelike shards covering the kitchen floor. “How’s the necromancing business? Any breakthroughs? Any closer to that life’s goal?” 

This was not going as Cabal thought it would. He had not counted on her capering about his feet and garlanding him with roses, but now he was wondering if he had entered the correct house. Apart from the abrupt change of subject, Leonie had, for the most part, stopped taking cheap shots at his profession. In his confusion he answered honestly. “No. Not really.” 

“Too bad. Oh, don’t give me that sad-eyed look. The you-don’t-know-my-tragic-story look. Bugger your tragic story. Like you’re the only one who ever lost anything. Go away.” She turned her face away and looked out the window. 

She looked bored. No, she was frightened. No... he was terrible at this, Cabal realized. He had no idea what was going on with Leonie Barrow. He could leave; that course of action would obviously receive her full support. He looked at her across the oilcloth table for two. He sat in Frank Barrow’s chair; he could tell from the coffee ring at the right side of the setting and the marks from an errant match. 

“Will you tell me what’s wrong?” He said it before he realised what he was doing.

It had an immediate effect. She deflated back in her chair, though she still didn’t look at him. "I tried to go for evensong not long after I returned. My temperature soared before I got through the church door. I had to go home. I was in bed for three days. I can’t go on hallowed ground any more."

He felt a sudden easing of anxiety he hadn’t realized was there. Tantrums were infuriating and inexplicable. Intolerance of churchyards, however, was intriguing and researchable. Leonie had continued speaking. He managed to pay attention.

"...the nightmares and the fear. The rage, and the fantasies of killing all those bastards at the Dee society. I’m different. When you came to get me I didn’t stay in the dungeon because I was weak or because I was frightened. I stayed there because I was afraid of what I might do. I could have killed all of them in cold blood, Cabal, I swear it" 

Cabal thought to himself that she had excellent reason to kill Jones. He might have done it himself in her place, but he had an inkling that Leonie would not find his moral support reassuring. He stood, went to the cupboard, and retrieved another teacup. He placed it and its saucer on the table, sat, poured more assam, took lemon, and sipped. “I see. You have, objectively, experienced greater sensitivity of your demonic inflammation and, subjectively, personality changes. Should I be offended that you did not contact me?"

Her face crinkled with disgust. "I owed you a letter. I couldn’t…. Without you, none of this would have happened.” It was not said with gratitude. "I’ve been a fool. A girl from Penlow inserting herself into... magic and demons and spells. I should have turned around and left when I saw you at the asylum before you spoke to Twiccian. I don't belong in your world."

Cabal snorted. "There is no 'my world' or 'your world,' Miss Barrow. They are the same, and it is safe _nowhere_ , not even here. I remember you became involved in Twiccian's affairs first because you were curious, and then because you refused to turn a blind eye when you saw a threat to innocent people. Personally, I doubt their innocence - and I doubt they were worth the effort - but I do not think you are a fool. Brave. Idealistic, even.” A satiric edge to his voice flayed the adjective of its praise. “But you didn’t used to be a fool."

“I was a lot of things. I wanted to be a trick rider in the circus. I had a social life. I thought skeletons mostly stayed in the ground. I didn’t have a single arch-enemy. I was one hundred percent human. I was very, very normal."

“I doubt you were ever that. But must you add behaving like an fussy infant and sticking your head in the ground to those distinctions?” Cabal had seen that look on many faces, but he had never seen Leonie Barrow looking as if she would like to hit him. 

"Where the hell... Where could I even start?"

"Well, not there. I don't recommend it. Start by asking me."

"Appeal to your sweetness of nature?"

Cabal was annoyed. He wanted to help Leonie - or, more precisely, he wanted her to be back to normal - but he could see no reason to assist her. It was irritating, like a seed between his teeth. He was not a philanthropist. But an exchange of services.... "or offer me something I want."

She looked back at him, and she was thinking about what he wanted. "I don't think you need my help with that."

“Need, no. But it will save me some time. In any case, seeing you attached to your father's house like a fungus is pitiful. Meet me in London in two weeks." He named a hotel. "Plan to stay for... perhaps a week. It will only take a few days to run through the possibilities, but you may need time to recover."

Leonie raised an eyebrow, and then she guffawed. It took her a full minute to stop laughing and get her breath back. Every time she looked at him frowning at her she started again. When she finally collected herself enough to reply, she sounded more like herself than she had since he arrived. "Cabal, if any other man alive made me that offer in that tone, I would accuse him of having a very high opinion of himself. At the very least. What will we be doing?"

He ignored her baffling amusement. “Curing you. I have rarely experimented on live subjects- not since university, in fact - but I am tolerably confident i can, one way or another, end your condition." Cabal smiled, somewhat. "We can discuss how you will return the favour after."

Leonie hesitated. Deep down she knew she wanted, needed, Cabal's help badly, but only an idiot would write him a moral blank cheque. "Not good enough. I won't do anything illegal."

"Too low an offer. I don't want your help with filing."

“I am absolutely certain your filing is illegal,” she muttered.

Cabal gave an irritated sigh. "I will not ask you to do anything evil."

"Nothing immoral."

"Nothing unethical. That is my offer." 

Leonie was deeply sceptical. "Whose ethics?"

"Take the offer." His tone was hard, but there was almost an appeal in the way he leaned across the table. He straightened.

Her shoulders dropped. "Do we shake on it?"

"No. I will meet you in the hotel dining room at nine p.m. two weeks today. Tell your father what you are doing if you must, but do not tell him where we will be. I will be under the name Schmidt. I will arrange our rooms." 

"Wouldn't your house be safer?" 

“I would have said so -before your visit. Also, you have reacted to the wards in the past."

He left with a minimum of ceremony, and Leonie locked the door behind him pointedly. A summer breeze blew through open windows, and the study was sunny. She walked in to find that the chessboard had been set up. Leonie didn’t quite smile. He wasn't going to let her out of that one, was he?


	3. In which we visit the golden age of the hotel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dinner.

Cabal waited for Leonie in a quiet corner of the hotel dining room. In compliance with convention he wore white tie. In defiance of convention he read at the table, propping the portfolio against the silver epergne and its floral arrangement. 

Above him were high coffered ceilings and sturdy arches. The view was not, in Cabal’s opinion, improved by the palm trees some optimistic soul had brought inside to wither in the shade. Rows of tables were set with fine crystal and silver in perfect geometry; the sight soothed him. 

Leonie arrived. He belatedly realised he had instructed her to arrive directly at the dining room, with no opportunity to change into evening wear, even presuming, he realized even more belatedly, she owned any. She had managed. She carried herself well, accepting the welcome of the _maître d'hôtel_ with composure and following him to the table, but her eyes sparkled as she looked around the dining room, taking in the candles and gaslights, the elegantly dressed older couples and families waited on by subtly omnipresent staff. A rustle of silk and good accents pervaded the room. Cabal put away his treatise; they should be unremarkable tonight, and ignoring his dining companion in favour of Andean mummification would attract attention. And it wasn’t an interesting treatise.

"Good evening, Mr. Schmidt.” Her pupils, he saw, were unchanged. 

"Good evening. I hope your journey was uneventful.” The _maître d’_ left.

“Yes. It's wonderful to be out; I stared out the window the entire way to London. I feel like a schoolgirl finally allowed off the grounds." She smiled at him in genuine delight. "Have you been well? Was your house safe when you returned?" 

“Safe for me. Relatively speaking. It took three days to dismantle, recapture, and erase the traps.” And so Cabal was, quite without realising it, led into a conversation which touched on subjects of mutual interest and did not snag itself on anything fraught. The talk eventually led around to Leonie's home town. “I have never seen anywhere like Penlow,” Cabal remarked.

“It is a lovely place, isn’t it?"

“No, it is idyllic.” He shuddered lightly. "Utterly, pervasively, perfectly, idyllic. I have sometimes wondered if a supernatural effect is at work."

“I’m sure you’re wrong. It is very pretty, but… well, it’s home. And I haven’t always been happy there.” 

“That may be true. But even in Penlow….” He halted. He was going to say “people die,” but she knew that well enough; he substituted “there may be sadness. I assure you, it is a bizarre place. A freak of probability, if not actually influenced by the supernatural."

Leonie favoured him with a sarcastical look, but she seemed amused.

He was, in fact, having an unexpectedly good time. Leonie laughed over her own story of receiving a formal notice from the university of her gating in absentia for missing her curfew - due to her kidnapping. 

He snorted. "Nothing changes." And he hesitated, then offered his own story of an undergraduate miscarriage of justice, more or less. She found it quite funny. 

"And they were actually angry that you'd gotten rid of the statue?” 

"They tried to rusticate me, but of course they failed. The bylaws didn't cover annihilating school monuments in self-defence. And the thing did technically pose a danger; I think it ate the school's founder after he was stupid enough to install it. But I left the school before the end of the term, in any case." He halted, unsure if he had just ended the conversation, but the wine arrived and Leonie seemed not to notice. She raised her glass. "To my health." 

It would be a pleasant little problem, he thought. A change of scene, some intellectual diversion, and the securing of a valuable resource, Miss Barrow’s assistance. He wondered if this was how others felt about a holiday. 

She was trying to look around the dining room without appearing to gawp. "This is all very grand, isn’t it? Herr Schmidt has a hedonistic streak.” 

“The coloured marble in the lobby may be excessive."

“No! It's unforgettable. Although. The inlaid portrait of her majesty is more patriotic than aesthetic.” She surveyed the menu. “I don’t want to look provincial, but what is _suprêmes de volailles Jeannette_?"

“Chicken. In aspic."

She shuddered. “Never mind that, then. Really, what is all this in aid of, Cabal? The coloured marble and the _suprêmes de volailles_ and the palm trees, heaven help them.” She looked at the ceiling enquiringly.

“Dinner."

“And...?"

“We are at a hotel because it is convenient and likely to be free of preexisting wards and spells that may interfere with the treatments. This appearance in the dining room is establishing our normalcy."

“You do look very nice,” she said, and giggled. 

She had laughed since she arrived, but that giggle.... Cabal did not like it. “Do you feel quite normal, Miss Barrow?” 

She waved the question away with her wine glass. “I haven’t felt normal in months. I’m not sure I remember what it was like. I feel fine, so don’t fuss."

“I am not given to….” He shut his mouth. “Very well."

He applied himself to his menu, and Leonie appeared to do the same. He looked up to see a boyish waiter hastening to her side. “Excuse me. Would you translate this for me?"

Cabal’s eyes narrowed. There was something elaborate about her innocent manner, and he suspected she read French reasonably well for an Englishwoman. 

“Bayzers de Veerge,” she continued. Cabal and the waiter shared a microscopic flinch. 

“ _Baisers de, de Vierge, mademoi… madame… mademoiselle_.” He blushed from his collar to his forehead. "Maiden’s kisses."

“Oh my." Her eyes went wide with pantomimed shock, and the waiter turned a deeper shade in his anxiety.

“That is all.” Cabal didn’t bother to hide his irritation. He could be a completely normal and unsuspicious irritated person, couldn’t he? That shouldn’t attract attention.

Leonie was in giggles behind her _carte_. “I’m sorry, Cabal, I just couldn’t resist. He was so young and pink."

“If you can stop sharpening your claws on the waitstaff, Miss Barrow, we should order so we can get to work."

“I truly am sorry.” She recovered herself and tried to look penitent. "I’ve been penned up so long that I feel rather silly." 

Cabal glanced at a waiter, who gracefully translated himself to the tableside without appearing to rush. Cabal's French accent was nearly flawless, better than his English. “ _Tournedos Rossini_."

Leonie handed her menu to the waiter. “That sounds lovely. The same for me, please."

The waiter glanced at Cabal for his approval. He shook his head. “ _Nein_. Your health." 

He was oblivious, but Leonie froze, glaring at him. She paused and inhaled deeply. “The salmon.” The waiter retreated. “Now I can see why you chose this place. They accommodate autocrats."

“You should avoid red meat until we know what is wrong with…” 

She interrupted. “What's wrong with you?” She glared at him, then shook her head and waved her question away, but the tone of the silence had changed. Leonie was the first to break it. "So. At that school, did they eventually catch you breaking into the medical students' mortuaries?" She ornamented the question with an unamused little laugh.

He would not lie. "I became overconfident. I hadn't yet realized the necessity of forging the logs. These days, of course, I rarely bother.” 

“Lovely."

“Not lovely, no. Few sane people consider stealing bits of dead bodies - and whole ones, as required - ‘lovely.’ But it is necessary to my work.” 

“Necessary to your very necessary work,” she scoffed.

Normally this would have annoyed Cabal, but he was distracted. He observed her warily, as if she might pull a switchblade or start dancing on a table. “You are behaving oddly. This cannot be about your dinner order."

“I am not behaving oddly. I’m just not as much of a tightarsed stick as you are, Cabal." She spoke loudly enough to be overheard.

“Schmidt,” he breathed, through clenched teeth. 

“A stick by any other name.” She was leaning across the table now; there was a gleam in her eye. 

"We cannot argue here. This dinner is intended to establish us as normal and dull, and it will fail if you behave like an intoxicated lout. Will you be offering to fight any man in the joint next?"

"Just. One."

“Lower your voice. We are attracting attention.” And, indeed, the young couple who were actually arguing in a public dining room were attracting glances and whispers from other diners. This had been a bad idea. Leonie had been apathetic and inward in Penlow except when he deliberately baited her, but now….

“I have had it up to here,” she articulated, face flushed, "with your imperious little whims. If you can’t treat me with a little respect, I am leaving now."

Cabal was stung by the relative injustice of the accusation. Leonie was, in fact, one of the few people he habitually treated with a little respect. “If you think they are whims,” he countered, "feel free to disregard them and see what happens. I suppose I could mail the pieces back to Penlow. Do not forget why we are here. If you have any control over your little problem would you kindly, if it suits you, simulate a minor ailment so we can leave the dining room?"

Leonie held his gaze for a moment, her posture tense. Then she shivered and dropped her head to her hand, moaning. She fumbled for her handkerchief, upsetting her wineglass, and after a moment she accepted Cabal’s stiffly offered arm and allowed herself to be led from the dining room. It may have been an accident that she stepped heavily on his foot as she wavered. He bent over her solicitously and hissed, "you think you are so funny." She dug her fingers into his arm, and he retaliated by elbowing her. No more of that, he thought. 

The maitre d’ caught them before they left the dining room. “Is madame unwell?"

“Yes. Please have our dinner conveyed to Mr. and Mrs. Schmidt’s room, danke."

He took a small pleasure at Leonie's discomposure as she thought through the implications. As they walked through the lobby she whispered, “I suppose that is necessary? What if we meet someone I know?"

Cabal felt his temper pulling at the leash. “If the indignity is too great, by all means, turn tail and run home. I take no pleasure in the imposture, believe me."

Perhaps Leonie made another attempt on Cabal's instep as they crossed the inlaid floor, or perhaps he jerked her arm under the guise of supporting her, but whatever the cause, Leonie tripped, overbalanced, and sat down hard. She lande on the inlaid marble representation of her late majesty's left jowl, still clinging to Cabal's arm. 

It was the purest misfortune that the hotel manager had already been walking over to enquire about his guest's health when she flopped on her backside in the middle of his grand lobby. It was another that she looked up at him, eyes wide with surprise and pain, and that the chandeliers illuminated her pinprick pupils beyond a shadow of a doubt.

The manager saw the blond man pull his wife to his feet with more speed than care. Giving the manager a brusque nod he towed his discombobulated spouse into an elevator. The manager stared after them, mouth still open, his commiseration and offer of help unspoken. What could cause those eyes?

***

Elevator. She felt like the stuffing had gone out of her, leaving her as tired and blank as before. Cabal was still angry. His behaviour was quite bland, however; he replied quietly to questions from the hotel staff and accepted their services calmly. She began to see how he could, when he bothered, slip unobtrusively through life. She squinted at him, and tried to see an irritable, brilliant man, no more remarkable than any young scientist or surgeon, and possibly no worse a man than most. With a wife? She shook her head to dislodge the train of thought. 

The creaking of the machinery echoed in her ears, unconnected to their ascent, and everything she saw appeared strangely distant. She'd experienced this a few times after studying all night. She felt a wash of nostalgia for studying. Libraries. Card catalogues. Splintery drawn-upon, desks. She hadn't used her brain for a damn thing lately. She supposed she had gone into a kind of hibernation. And now she was going to have to think, and think about her captivity, too.

A porter unlocked the door and let them into a spacious room in blues and golds that shone softly in the gaslight. It was furnished with a place for dining, a parlour area, and a pair of desks. Three doors opened off it, leading to a bathroom and two bedrooms. Heavily draped bow windows overlooked the street. 

Leonie felt a resurgence of the giddiness that had claimed her at the hotel doors; she had rarely stayed in hotels and never in anything this grand. Even in Cabal’s company it was exciting. The door to the hall clicked shut, and she realised the porter had left. “Ten minutes to unpack, then we will work." He closed the door to a bedroom on his last words. She went to the other.

Her bedroom was not like something out of a film, but it was comfortable and dignified. It took her fewer than ten minutes to unpack, so she washed and changed out of her travelling clothes. She wondered what 'starting work' was going to be like. Heaven help her if he was still angry then.

When she reemerged Cabal was waiting, still in white tie. Had he packed his cardigan, or did he only risk it behind his own wards? She may as well get this over with. "I'm sorry. That business downstairs was counterproductive, wasn't it? And beyond that, rather embarrassing for you. I must have looked drunk. And I was rather rude."

"I am accustomed to ignorant comments about my profession." His notebook open and pen ready, he fixed her with a look. “Describe all your unusual symptoms, starting with the physical and moving to the mental."

“That’s very dull. We aren’t jumping right into the bit with the black chicken?"

“That was a stopgap measure and one I would rather forget. And I didn’t bring a chicken."

“I hear the staff at a good hotel can find you practically anything."

Dinner arrived, but it was consumed in a more informal style than would have been the case downstairs. Cabal ate and took notes. While he looked as if he were continually on the point of combining the two operations, somehow the pen stayed with the notebook and the fork with the plate.

She had been dreading this part of the process. She would have preferred to forget everything that had happened since her abduction, but somehow it was easier than she expected, telling it around forkfuls of salmon, her shoes kicked off and Cabal writing in his notebook, asking rare, precise questions. "Do you know when your pupils contracted?"

"Not really."

"Did you feel anything odd when I disabled the cell's wards?" She had. It had been a sudden wash of colour, a sensation passing over her nervous system that had made her shiver, a sudden feeling of free-fall in her gut. 

"How long were you in the churchyard?" Some of the questions made sense to her, others didn't. But she answered as well as she could, and late evening turned into night. She took the cheese plate over to an easy chair - she was still hungry. She had shot envious glances at his steak until it disappeared. He spread his notes over the loveseat and she practically had to fight him for the soft sheep's cheese. She ran out of details first, then he ran out of questions, and finally he wrote rapidly in his indecipherable script, no longer eating or looking up. Leonie let him. Her head listed to one side and she brought it back up with a jerk. It was two in the morning, and her easy chair was far too comfortable. 

"Let us discuss," opened Cabal, composing himself comfortably for a lecture. 

Leonie forestalled him by heaving herself to her feet. "I am discussing nothing but sleep, my boy. I have been awake for twenty hours and have travelled, made a public spectacle of myself, and relived one of the worst times of my life. I am finished until at least nine tomorrow morning, and you had better provide breakfast if you want your lab rat bright-eyed."

He looked a little downcast. "Good night, Miss Barrow. Rest well. You may need your strength." 

"Sleep tight, and thank you.” But she stood in her door and didn’t leave. "I'm sorry I was so unpleasant.” He looked up in time to see her grimace, “though I can’t promise it won’t happen again. We disagree about your work. I think it's... well. But I would like to… I wouldn’t want to belittle it, or you.” And she closed the door before he could formulate a reply.


	4. In which the metaphysician prescribes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Would it relieve your ennui if I tried to eat your brains?" offered Leonie.

**7:30 am**  
Cabal was sitting at breakfast, fully dressed and alert. Leonie’s door opened; she saw him and grunted. She was hollow-eyed, still wearing a dressing gown. He averted his eyes as she crossed to the bathroom and kicked the door closed behind her. An extended period of splashing followed. Cabal submerged himself in the mummification monograph.

 

 **7:55 am**  
"You did not sleep well."

Her blue eyes shed their weary glaze. “Brilliant deduction, Holmes."

“No.” He looked at her hand hovering by the handle of the coffee pot. “Confine yourself to tea. Stronger stimulants are inadvisable today.” 

She helped herself to tea, her glare obscured by the sober cover of the monograph. "If you could manage just a few shreds of politeness, it would make life easier. I am stifling a desire to stab you with that fork. Or douse you in precious, scalding coffee, which would be more poetically just. I could use that energy for more productive things later. I suppose I may eat?"

He assented, and she savaged the food he had ordered. The day was bright and warm, a ray of sun and a breeze fighting its way past the heavy curtains. A buzz of activity came faintly from the street, now bustling with office workers and the couriers, lunch counters, and assorted small businesses that catered to them.

“Did you have one of the dreams?” He did not lower his blasted book.

“Yes. The one in the cell.” She halted a moment, then returned to loading her plate with a sliced pale cheese, some sort of seed bread, fruit, and cold sausage. A plentiful breakfast had been laid in the German style. Naturally. Cabal’s plate suggested he had only picked at it. She thought hard about German breakfasts. Did one eat lunch later the same day, or just stagger back to bed for a nap? 

She did not think about the dream in the cell. Since Leonie’s imprisonment, she had often returned to it in nightmares. In the dream the lights failed, leaving her in a pitch-black space filled with, she knew, monsters. And Jones.

“Any variation?"

“Yes. But I can’t imagine it’s relevant."

“One never knows."

"I heard your voice outside the cell. Singing. I couldn't make out the words, but it was you.” She spread a roll with marmalade and took a bite.

"Probably not relevant, then.” Cabal was sorry he’d pressed for details. 

“Light opera, maybe music hall,’ she volunteered around her mouthful of bread. "Do you sing?” Her amusement faded and she pushed a crumb around her plate with a finger. “And then the one where I kill Jones."

"The one with the knife?"

"No, the other one." In this one Jones was on the floor and she was attacking him with her bare hands. She didn't like to describe the way Jones's skull gave way gelatinously under her fingers, leaving her with handfuls of skin and brain and hair. "Just as usual. And then I couldn't sleep." She had come into the parlour and read by a single lamp until day broke and the early commuters woke with the birds. She pushed her plate away.

Cabal slowly turned his teacup in its saucer. "Have you considered adapting to it?"

It took her a moment to realise what he meant. “You aren’t joking.” It was a comment, not a question. Cabal’s sense of humour was as active as a barnacle.

"The physical disadvantages are inconsequential. The personality changes may be temporary, or perhaps you simply need time to adjust to them.” He readjusted his teacup. “You might even find a tincture of demon advantageous to your career."

"You can't be serious. It's all very well for you to say... I don't even know if I have a soul." It was well-known that the soulless could not walk on sanctified ground, and a fear had gnawed at Leonie that somehow....

His eyebrows lifted. "You would know. The operation is rare and somewhat painful, and…” He broke off for a moment. "I don't think it can be done without your consent. Besides, the symptoms you reported are not consistent with soullessness."

“All right.” She had spoken before remembering that Cabal had intimate experience with the condition. His teacup sat immobile. 

He shrugged and continued. “You do have a soul. I do not know if your current state is affecting it. I do not know if the state of your soul matters."

“To me?"

“Generally. Though I suppose Hell is uncomfortable."

“I suppose you’re raising this out of some sense of fairness, Cabal. But yes, I am totally and entirely sure I want this out of me now. Let me know before you chop my arm off, but I’m willing to sign on for most measures.” 

Brave, he thought again. But also frightened, and acting out of that fear. Well, it had been unlikely, but he thought he would ask. “Did you bring something with short sleeves?"

 

 **8:10 am**  
She sat across from him. His notes were lined up on the polished wood; she had nothing in front of her. 

“First, let us assume that this is a further stage of the demonic infection you received from the creature in Twiccian's lair. The trauma of the abduction may have precipitated its activation.'

 _Trauma_. The word sounded particularly Germanic in his mouth. "I think the society's wards retarded the effects. They were probably designed to exclude or contain demons. They would, in fact, have to be idiots not to include such protections, given the temptation to send something diabolical and hooved after them.

“When I eliminated the wards you experienced the full effect." Mentally, he added that her seclusion and melancholy had temporarily suppressed the symptoms that were now becoming irritatingly apparent.

“Do you have any idea what it is? Inherently? Is it… a thing... in my arm?"

“Your body’s immune system seemed to treat it as an infection. Have you had any repetition of the swelling or pain in your arm?"

“No."

He drummed his fingers irritably. “It could be material. It could be a fragment of spell. The being itself wasn’t even real matter, but its invasion of your arm - or more accurately your unconventional removal of the thing from your arm - is almost certainly what caused your current state. It is a pretty little problem.” 

“It is my mental and physical health, Cabal."

He conceded the point with a bored nod. "Let us assume it is material, a physical being or substance."

"Could it be cut out, then?"

"If there is no other choice, I suppose we could try, but for all we know, it permeates your bone or tissue. Enough."

 

 **8:15 am**  
Cabal examined her arm in the strongest light the room had to offer and inspected her eyes with some instruments that were familiar from the oculist’s visit after her return home. He held her hand up to the light. He looked through its translucencies, squinting into the sun, and scrutinized her fingernails. He prodded her arm, peered at her veins. He dropped her wrist and went to the trunk that he was to serve as equipment locker, dispensary, and library. 

He cast over his shoulder, “do you wish to start with the least invasive treatments, or with those most likely to succeed?"

“Ah. Least invasive." 

So she spent the morning knocking back potions (though Cabal insisted on calling them a-series test batches), slathering creams on her skin, and even, at one point, inhaling some sort of powder or gas through a rubber apparatus with a small electric bellows. She read while waiting for these things to take effect. Cabal started by taking precise notes on everything, including checks on her condition at timed intervals, measurements of her blood pressure, etc., and Leonie kept a hand mirror by to check her eyes every few minutes. 

Treatment after treatment failed to produce so much as a twinge or blister, let alone a villainous cloud seeping from her skin or a change to the diameter of her pupils. Cabal struck out test batch names with excessive vigor. After lunch he paced, and by dinner-time he was aiming kicks at the furniture. Each test batch had been the result of research, imagination, and lab time. Each had been carefully composed of materials that could disrupt, unbind, neutralise, or banish demonic matter without being too damaging to human flesh. Each one was a minor masterpiece, and each had been as useless as the last. The only effects were a rawness of Leonie's skin where successive treatments had been scrubbed away, and she reported a green halo around the lights - a minor side effect of one of the afternoon's treatments.

 

 **9:09 pm**  
"Would it relieve your ennui if I tried to eat your brains?" offered Leonie.

" _Gut_. Fine.” He was not answering Leonie’s question but his own frustration. He shoved a chair under a gas-bracket. “Sit here.” 

Leonie obeyed, but she felt a qualm when Cabal brought his new equipment from the trunk. It was a hanging glass bottle etched in pretty swirls and contained in a filigreed brass housing. Next was a length of rubber tubing - ending in a fine needle. She swallowed. “I take it we’ve moved on to the next stage of invasiveness?"

“Yes.” He hooked the bottle's housing to the bracket, opened another flask, tipped in the contents, opened a smaller flask, measured a quantity of dark fluid, and added it to the bottle. He connected the hose and needle and bled a quantity of the mixture out while tapping the apparatus. Finally, he capped the needle as if satisfied. "Your arm."

Unwillingly, Leonie offered the member in question. "Have you done this before? On the living?"

Cabal snorted but did not answer. He tied a tourniquet to assist him in finding the vein. How difficult could it be, he thought.

"Ow. Are you sure you've tied the... Ow. Could you find a larger needle? Did the horses use them all? OW. Good god. I'm sorry about all the things I said last night. Even the complimentary ones. Especially the - DO you have to dig around like that? It's a vein, not the lost tomb of... Ouch." 

Cabal, successful, secured the needle to her arm and released the tourniquet. "Sit there for twenty minutes."

Leonie sat. In twenty minutes, Cabal changed the bottle, examined her, ran clear saline into her veins for another half-hour, then tried another test batch from series A-2. Then another. 

 

 **11:58 pm**  
Leonie nodded in her chair until she banged her head against its carved back. 

“Unhook me, _Herr Doktor Schadenfreude_.” 

Just as well, he thought gloomily. Interactions between the treatments should not be a problem, but her body should process out the cocktail of magical and medical ingredients before she started seeing more than green rings around the gas brackets. He sat down with his notes to review the treatments so far. He had more test batches, but the utter lack of success so far felt like a warning. If they failed, what would he try? 

He picked the day’s notes, interlineated with observations and scarred with deep pencilmarks. He wore a faint contented smile as he filled a pen. He would make a fair copy for his records, and perhaps a new idea would occur to him.

 

 **4:45 am**  
Cabal came awake in bed in the early morning. He lay quite still. Distant sounds from the hall suggested a change of acoustics; his door was open. He opened his eyes in the dark. Before retiring he had drawn the window curtains tight against the reflected light from a city of streetlamps, but the darkness was not absolute.

A blink later he was sitting up, Webley Boxer levelled at the intruder sitting in his chair. A moment later, he lowered it and lit the bedside lamp, though he did not shift his attention from Leonie Barrow blinking at him in the sudden light.

She opened her mouth. “Good God, man, where are your clothes?” The sheets had pooled at his stomach, and he was at an impasse with his dignity. 

He had seen no reason to change his customary sleeping habits, and those habits did not include nightwear. Abandoning hope of finding a suave solution, he lay down and swathed himself in the sheets again, glaring at her. “In the wardrobe. Where they are supposed to be,” he hinted broadly. 

“How do you survive without a nightshirt?"

“Far be it from me,” continued Cabal with dogged patience, “to suggest that this conversation has strayed into the excessively personal. Would I be trespassing too much if I asked what the hell you are doing here?"

There was a pause, awkward on Leonie’s side, at least. “I went to sleep. I woke up here."

“You were awake. Your eyes were wide open."

“I couldn’t have been. I don’t remember anything.” 

“Go back to bed, Miss Barrow. Your own, if I need to specify."

She flamed pink and stood. "But what was I doing here?"

"Watching me sleep." Neither of them liked that statement, but neither of them could deny it, either.

After she closed the door Cabal rose and locked it behind her. He returned the Webley Boxer under the blanket near his hand (it was large enough to produce an uncomfortable lump under a pillow). He would doze until it was time to rise, but he would not sleep. As the match had caught the lampwick, he was certain he had seen an answering flame in Leonie's gaze, like the green flash in a cat’s eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My weekly postings have fallen behind schedule as I prepare for a vacation in the UK. I will not, sadly, be passing through Cabal-land, but I will wave as I fly over it. I will have to wait until next time before I tramp through the northern countryside, looking for a lone house. If I dare.
> 
> Chapter 5 will benefit from two transatlantic flights and any amount of bus and train time. Chapter 6 is almost finished. After that it gets a bit untidy, but it will be eight or ten chapters total, I think.


	5. In which Leonie is dosed, slandered, and doused.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Why do these things require blood?"
> 
> “It is the nature of magic and demonology both. Of course it requires blood. You’re lucky it _only_ requires blood."

Chapter 5

 

When Leonie arose Cabal was sitting at the table reading a newspaper. She cringed in anticipation, but he did not emerge from behind it. A plate sat under a _cloche_ at her seat. She hoped he would be willing to bury last night’s embarrassing and disturbing incident under a lead-lined _cloche_ of silence.

She sat and uncovered her breakfast. She kept one eye on the newspaper with its scattering of grim headlines: the possibility of war on the continent, a peculiar series of murders involving fruit, a bank foreclosing on an insurance company, two men discovered naked and gibbering in a city suburb. She had scarcely embarked upon her food when the barricade of newsprint shivered and fell. She froze as Cabal hove into view, waiting for a barbed comment, but he merely refolded the newspaper so precisely it appeared untouched. He rose and left the table.

Now that Leonie had risen, Cabal set about warding her bed. It was not an advanced or permanent ward, but it might keep her in her _verdammt_ bed at night. He wondered if she would mind sleeping shackled to a light, comfortable chain. Meanwhile, she ate her breakfast, looking quite unconcerned as he walked in and out of her bedroom with arcane materials. When he had finished he went to the window and sneaked looks at her, trying to catch the green flare in her irises that had discomposed him in the night. She dusted croissant crumbs off her blouse. 

“You’re staring. Don’t worry, I won’t bite.” Leonie walked to the chair she had left late yesterday evening, sat under the gas bracket, rolled up her sleeve, and presented her arm for the needle. Despite everything, he felt a frisson of pleasure; another day of experiments.

****

For four hours Leonie watched solutions of various tints trickle through the drip chamber. “Talk to me, Cabal."

His head snapped up from his writing. “Is it working? Do you feel anything?” His eyes swept over her.

“No."

He looked back down. “Entertain yourself, then."

“I could accept feeling like a lab rat. Today, I’m starting to feel like research material. Did you eat breakfast?"

“Downstairs.” He considered sharing the meal’s coda with Leonie, but decided against it. The silence stretched for a moment.

"What did happen to the zombie I met in your basement?” 

He raised an eyebrow. She made it sound as if she and the revenant had been formally introduced, instead of exchanging glazed and revolted looks, respectively. “She died not long after you left. A flaw of that test batch, it seems; the results are ephemeral."

Leonie felt a small relief. Nature had, in a way, taken its course. At least she didn’t have to picture Cabal beating the zombie to death with a hammer. She left him to his solitary writing and reading, which he interrupted only to change her drip. The day wore on in tourniquets and infusions, and a grey morning faded into an ashen-skied afternoon. 

Just then, a knock sounded at the door. To Leonie’s surprise Cabal swore viciously, inaudibly, and jumped up. He snatched the intravenous flask from the wall. The hand Leonie had instinctively placed over the needle was smacked away, and the intravenous flask replaced on the gas bracket to allow Cabal another hand for ripping off the tape and pulling out the needle. His furious glare suggested she should remain silent. He disappeared into his room with the intravenous equipment, throwing in a few odds and ends as he went. Another knock thudded on the door. Cabal was advancing upon her with an upraised pipette. One hard hand on her forehead, and a drop of liquid fell into each eye, stinging and blurring. He stalked off to look for something and found a shawl draped over the chest at the foot of Leonie’s bed; he tucked it around her shoulders forcefully. “Keep your arm covered.” He detoured to draw back a curtain, letting a bright ray of sunshine into the room, and she squinted at the assault of light. 

The task done, he took a step towards the door. He looked back at Leonie, who was dabbing the harsh liquid from her cheeks. He was trying to say something, but couldn’t work out where to start. “Look normal.” Everything seemed very bright and very close. She heard him turn the bolt. “At the better hotels, no-one would dream of pounding on one’s door like invading Prussians."

The knocking had in fact been sedate, if insistent, but the sleek little figure who entered the room did not seem at all upset by Cabal’s rudeness. Leonie recognized him as the hotel functionary who had witnessed her feigned sickness and subsequent fall in the lobby. He was trailed by a bellboy who took up a post inside the door.

“I am terribly sorry to have interrupted your morning again, Herr Schmidt.” His pronunciation of the name suggested he spoke German, but like Cabal he used English. “But I wished to bring my best wishes to Frau Schmidt in person. I am Mr. Ferriault, the manager. Your good husband, Madame, indicated after breakfast that you were not entirely well. Is there anything in the power of this hotel that might ease you?"

Leonie was wordless under this deluge of Continental good-breeding. But there was a sharpness in his eyes and a pointedness to his regard that suggested that his visit was not a mere courtesy. What the devil was she to say to him? What would Cabal’s wife say to anything?

“My thanks, Monsieur. I am somewhat recovered."

“I will not detain you, then. But please contact me if there is anything you require.” He beckoned the bellboy forward, who placed a visiting card on the parlour table. As he bowed over her hand in farewell he shot a hard look at her eyes, and Leonie chilled. The bellboy shut the door behind his master, they heard the footsteps down the hall, and they were alone.

"What the hell was all that about? And what did you put in my eyes?" She could feel a headache starting.

“Belladonna,’ he smirked. “Also known as Devil's herb, _Atropa belladonna_ , and deadly nightshade. It worked. Your pupils are dilated almost to a normal diameter for the moment. Interesting: it suggests that the muscles are not, in fact, frozen. The manager thinks you're a drug addict,’ he threw out, almost an afterthought. "A dope fiend. A junkie?” Cabal savoured the word. His sense of humour surfaced at the oddest times. "He cornered me after breakfast.” 

The manager had opened their chat by saying that the hotel regrettably could not welcome guests with "certain predilections.” Even as Cabal planned escape routes, he thought this seemed an unusually breezy way to refer to necromancy. "This hotel prides itself on hospitality,’ the man had murmured. "But it is a certain kind of hotel, for a certain kind of person. Traditional. Sedate, even. We will resign ourselves to the rudeness of excluding you, sir, if it is necessary to preserve our reputation for quiet and calm.” 

Cabal snorted at the recollection. "Imagine my surprise when he indicated you were the undesirable in question."

Leonei groaned. "Oh, god. I’m here to get un-demoned. Why should this bother me more?"

She hadn’t expected a reply. “You are conventional.” It was a neutral statement, for Cabal.

“Were you ever conventional?"

“That is a luxury I cannot afford.” She heard a hint of bitterness. 

“Conventionality or reminiscence?” 

“Either. Now, Miss Barrow, your arm, please."

After this excitement she lapsed back into discomfort, fatigue, and boredom; she ate a sandwich with the needle still in her arm. Blessed release came around teatime; Cabal removed the intravenous apparatus and allowed her to bandage up. She had a bruise the colour and size of a ripe plum on the inside of her arm. 

Leonie felt hungry at the arrival of the tea tray and settled herself on the loveseat, ready to wreak terrible damage upon it, but Cabal was involved in something at the dining table. Reluctantly fascinated, she watched him.

He wiped his reservoir pen clean with a damp cloth, then dipped it in a tiny inkwell she hadn't seen before. He wrote a series of hieroglyphs on a slip of fresh parchment, popped it into a clean drinking drinking glass. He stoppered the inkwell with a tight-fitting lid and reached for a carafe of water, which he poured into the glass and over the parchment. He captured the slip with a pair of tweezers, agitated in the liquid it a moment, then removed it from the glass. He dabbed the adhering drops away on the inside of the rim and discarded the slip, now almost unmarked. Cabal set the ink-dimmed water at the edge of the table.

Leonie knew her role. Putting aside her pekoe she retrieved the glass and downed its contents, hope rising again. He watched her for reaction with a professional eye.

"It is an old method of dosing the illiterate. You have ingested the incantation."

“I’m not illiterate."

“I certainly hope you can’t read that language. Still, the effect should have been immediate.” Leonie sighed with disappointment and fatigue, and Cabal ticked off the last encrypted word on a list and closed his notebook. “Very well. This is excellent progress."

“Pardon me?” It didn’t feel like progress.

“Useful data. Yesterday I thought you might react to the ash wood extract, at least, but you had no reaction at all. You have just taken the last test batch I prepared."

She sagged onto the loveseat. "So what's left?” She began to play with the fringe of a cushion. She looked up at him, her fingers still threading through the silken gold tassels. The afternoon had turned cold; gusts of wind rattled raindrops against the window. 

“What is left? The most promising options are left. There was almost no chance you would be cured by the test batches.” 

“What the hell were they for, then?” She found her fingers tangled in the fringe; she let go before she damaged anything. The last two days had been boring and painful and exhausting, and apparently they had been pointless from the start.

“The more promising options are also the least legal, most unpleasant, and assuredly the most impractical. I have,” he congratulated himself, “also obtained a significant amount of interesting data, although it is mostly negative. I would like some tea."

“Pour it yourself.” She should have realised he would relish this; every failure was another bit of experimental data for the great man - but he could get his own thrice-damned tea. With an effort she returned to the subject of discussion. “How impractical?"

“We do not have a pearl blessed by the pope. Even presuming we acquired such a thing, we would still need a living saint to feed it to you. And then there’s the bath of virgins’ milk."

She looked unhappily at the milk jug in her hand and set it down. “Ergh. Who writes these things?"

“You can guess. It is roughly the same population working the other side of the game. The problem with the demonologists' solutions is that they generally assume a distinct and sentient demonic entity at work. I doubt the rather lurid methods they suggest would work on your infection. And I, as magus, am willing to go only so far in my personal involvement."

“Magus?" 

He threw his spoon at his plate. “That is how these people talk." He waved his fingers at the air in a gesture of impotent occultism. "It's all self-aggrandizement, fancy dress and... deviance. Strip that away, and you are left with the information that led to the test batches. Material weapons against a semi-material foe."

“Never mind. What do you have planned? Not all the options must require papal pearls."

"Exorcism," he replied crisply. "Or banishment might be a better characterisation. I will have a little chat with your stowaway, man-to... entity, and I will send it home."

"Entity? That's the best you can do?"

Cabal was not given to whimsical or ad hoc naming of phenomena. "Name it yourself, then."

The idea, now that she examined it, was vaguely revolting. Cabal was right. She couldn’t name it Bob or Tiny. She put down her teacup. "What do I do now?"

"Cut yourself, please.” He held out a scalpel. 

“You have got to be joking."

“Yes. I am joking. This is but the latest example of my constant barrage of japery and wit. Do not nick an artery. Do you remember the part of the arm I favour?" He waved the handle at her. 

She took it from him unhappily and bared her forearm. “Why do these things require blood?” She had been anxious for the real work to begin, but there were good reasons why most people didn’t do this kind of thing.

“It is the nature of magic and demonology both. Of course it requires blood. You’re lucky it _only_ requires blood. Oh, _Himmel, Arsch, und_ … not there, Leonie.” She had placed the scalpel against her skin experimentally." You enjoy having the use of all your fingers?” He twitched the blade from her hand.

“Thank you.” She held her arm out and only flinched a little when his cool fingers clamped on her wrist. 

He measured with his eyes and drew a quick, confident line with the blade. The cut welled with blood. He handed her a small flask. “Fill this.” 

“ _Fill_ this? What are you going to do, bathe in it?"

Cabal snorted. “You can easily spare four times that quantity. Six, if you don't need to run or fight afterward."

For lack of alternatives, Leonie was holding the beaker to the wound to catch the flow of blood. "This hurts more than one would expect.” 

“So do it properly the first time. All the way up to the line. Miss Barrow."

Later, restoring herself with iced cakes, she asked, “what should I wear?" 

"It doesn't matter in the least. If you really want to get into the spirit of the thing, I believe the ritual calls for a robe of blue samite fringed with human hair, but I assure you, a canvas overall would be just as acceptable to the occult forces. All they care about is the circle. The circle and the words."

And following tea, he produced them. He drew the circle on the floorboards under the rug. Leonie sat in a straight chair inside the circle, and he sat on the loveseat to recite the diabolic words. He spoke clearly but without emotion. It sounded like an elocution lesson in Hell. Leonie listened apprehensively, but she didn't feel anything strange. And then all was black.

...

She screamed in rage, an incoherent howl. Her mouth was open in an snarl, her eyes sightless and wide. Her hands were clawed over the arms of her chair. Cabal’s lips thinned. He had, as it happened, anticipated some unusual noise, so he had taken the rooms above and below theirs. This, however, would never do. She was shrieking like a gunshot Deep One, and M. Ferriault would hear about it. 

He found that she was not too incoherent to fight him as he dragged her to the bathroom, but that she was too furious to put up an organized resistance. He wrapped her tight in a towel like a wild-eyed cat, carried her awkwardly into the shower bath as she kicked at his shins, and turned it on. The cold water soaked them both to the skin, and her rage turned to confusion, then silence. Leonie stopped fighting, closed her eyes, and took deep shivering breaths. She started to move out of the spray, but Cabal didn't let her go. “Running water. It is helping.” She nodded and stopped trying to leave. “It grounds supernatural energy. You should stay in it until it’s likely the fit has passed."

She opened her eyes, unnatural blue, and looked up at him with a spark of humour that had been missing for some time. Through chattering teeth she asked, “can we turn on the hot tap, at least?"

Cabal abruptly realised that his presence in the tub was superfluous. He released Leonie, realised he couldn’t leave the shower without making a mess of the floor, did so anyway, adjusted the temperature of the water, and sat with his back to the tub. 

Still shivering, Leonie nodded. “I’m sorry.” She wiped the water out of her eyes. "Would you ring for extra towels?" Her voice was hoarse from screams she didn't remember.

Cabal made a wry face at his suit jacket. “And perhaps the hotel laundry is still open."

The bellboy fetched the towels and bore away a bag of sopping clothing with practiced blandness, ruffled only by the scale of his tip; if there was any way to prevent Ferriault from hearing about this, Cabal would take it. He had considered moving Leonie to another establishment, but he wanted to avoid that if he could; moving her might be troublesome. If she was worsening, she might inadvertently expose them both.

***

Cabal, towelled dry, leaned across the corner of the table. “What thoughts were in your mind before you lost consciousness?"

“Nothing, really.” He had asked her several times already. “I thought how emotionless you seemed; how precisely you were pronouncing the syllables. I wondered how long it would take."

“I do not understand. Do you remember what you felt? Was it pain, rage? Did it seem to come from outside yourself?” He pushed his damp hair back absently. She just shrugged. She had already told him she remembered nothing from the fit. "Did you feel anything unusual physically before the spasm?"

She had not, and said as much. But as she repeated herself, she found herself watching the endearingly mussed Cabal. It was always interesting to see him out of uniform. She rather wanted to pull him close by his cravat and.... She shook her head, hard. "I think I need a break." He frowned. He looked temptingly strict when he did that. 

"Why? What is happening? Are you experiencing violent impulses again?" He sounded more irritated than concerned. He watched her through narrowed eyes. She closed her eyes and focussed and when she reopened them, there was Cabal as usual, exerting the erotic fascination of a tin of prunes. He pursed his lips. His coat, abandoned over the back of her chair, smelled faintly of laboratory work. He must have had a haircut on his way to the hotel; the trimming around his ear was perfect. He leaned back a little, and she realised she had leaned forward and flattened her hands against the table. A sudden, lewd image came to her: Cabal's bedroom, her hands flattened on his chest....

Cabal wondered why Leonie had tilted forward and was now staring, motionless, at his left ear. She wasn't breathing. He leaned to the right, and her wide blue eyes followed him. He cleared his throat and she jumped, coming back to herself. "It's acting up,” she said. She sat back abruptly and stood. "I'm tired. I’m going to bed. Sorry about the schedule." 

"What is it now?" She slammed the door and cabal called through it, "you cannot keep information from me.” He modulated his voice in case of passers-by in the hall. "I am waiting, Miss Barrow."

"Not everything is relevant. Good night, Cabal." There were limits, damn it. 

Her warded bed did seem to help. Before she slept Leonie opened her door. Cabal was sitting at the table, one lamp alight. For a moment she thought he was researching; perhaps he had been, but his head was tilted back in his chair, his hands loose on the armrests. In solitude his face relaxed a little. She went back to bed.

Cabal heard her door close and opened his eyes to slits. He closed them again. He was fairly sure that had been Leonie herself, but he thought he might need a second opinion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Bitte entschuldigen Sie;_ my travels put me about three weeks behind. 
> 
> I am very happy to have this chapter finished; it fought and twisted and snapped its nasty little teeth at me, but I got the little bastard at last. Chapter six is about ready to go (and my favourite so far) and will post within the week.


	6. In which there isn't a tea party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cabal invites a diabolic guest not-for-tea. And, much to her disappointment, not for some fatal shagging, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merci for your patience; I'm figuring out new aspects of this fiction-writing gag, and sometimes new insights mean I have to do some rewriting on a chapter I thought was finished. The last chapters' posting will be spaced out but inescapable!
> 
>  
> 
> [Edit: the subsequent chapter is even now being wrenched from the raw chaos outside the universe, where Azathoth sleeps midst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes. Within the week. Two, tops. NB: I would not trust my ETAs, either.]

Cabal was drawing a circle on the rug. It was a large circle this time; they had moved the desk, loveseat, and several occasional tables. Leonie was less concerned by the dimensions than by something Cabal had let slip; this circle was not for warding, but for summoning. 

“You propose to summon a demon to our sitting room."

“More or less."

“Are you out of your gourd?"

Cabal opened his mouth, paused, and sighed. “I cannot possibly explain. We need more information. You must trust me.” He realised how unlikely an idea it was; despite Leonie's sheltered background, he had never found her naively trusting, or over-disposed to credit him, in particular, with good intentions or wisdom. He supposed it was one of the reasons he liked her. He believed she would, though.

Leonie raised her hands as if issuing an ultimatum, then dropped them and shook her head. “Must I watch?"

He paused for a moment in his fussy inscription of the circle. “It might be better if you didn’t. If you retire to your room, I will call you."

Leonie sat on her nice warded bed. She heard Cabal drawing the blinds and curtains, and then there was a silence. Out of the silence came a chant. It was muffled by the door, but she couldn’t help comparing it to the dreadful, alien phrases he had used to raise poor Cacon in Senza. Was it less terrifying because it was for a less macabre purpose? Or had she simply become inured to demons and corpses, necromancers and manifestations? Had she been more perceptive then, when she had seen something black at Cabal’s heart, or now, when she wondered if she had remembered to bring a nail file? She wished it would all be over already.

Lost in thought, it took her by surprise when there was a knock on the door. “Miss Barrow."

“You know, Cabal,” she called through the door. “When you are knocking on an unchaperoned lady’s bedroom door in order to introduce her to a entity of supernatural evil, it might be time to consider graduating to a first-name basis, don’t you think?” She opened the door.

“Oh, I like her, Johannes,” said the nine-foot-tall woman-spider. Leonie stepped back into her room, checked herself, and stepped forward again.

Cabal ignored her. “Madam Zarenyia, this is Miss Leonie Barrow, of Penlow-on-Thurse.” Leonie’s training took over, and she nodded politely. “Miss Barrow, this is the succubine named," and he spat out a long series of syllables, "generally called Zarenyia. She is a devil. She has promised not to harm you.” The devil inclined her head regally, then spoiled the effect by bending down, down, down, by Leonie’s side, to a depth that would have been awkward for a person of more conventional construction. She examined Leonie’s wristwatch. 

That delicate red-haired head matched a torso and arms of more or less human size and appearance. She wore a bandeau under an artfully unbuttoned sky-blue cardigan. Her back altered from soft, fair skin to black chitin and bristles; from there she was arachnid: vast gleaming body and eight segmented legs. She prodded the timepiece gently and tapped the glass with a painted fingernail. Her lower parts were spider-like, and yet… Leonie remembered not to stare a moment too late, but found that Zarenyia was now looking up at her with equal curiosity. The inhuman muscles contracted smoothly, pulling the devil upright again. “It’s absolutely lovely. It was your mother’s?” Her voice was soft and breathy with a hint of a drawl. 

Leonie, bewildered, fell back on her manners. "So, how do you know Herr Cabal?" 

"We adventured together. A sorcerer dissolved Johannes' loofah, so we went to Pandaemonium.” She polished one bristled foreleg with its neighbour. “Johannes turned into a mackerel at first, but he soon got the hang of it. Ask him to show you his wand some time. Unless you've already seen it?" 

Leonie turned a grin equal to Zarenyia's on Cabal. "You have a... wand?" 

"That is not relevant in the least." He hoped he was not showing his confusion. Leonie was standing close to Zarenyia, apparently quite at home. The _verdammt_ women could be sisters, at least from the waist up. There was something about that smile that made him itch. 

Leonie, turned the smile on Zareniya, where it was echoed happily. “So tell me more about this sorcerer who came after Cabal’s loofah."

She was happy to elaborate. “He was an immortal power-hungry maniac from ancient China who had found a way to channel the chaotic power of Pandaemonium. He spoke excellent German, considering." She shrugged. “The strange thing was that he didn’t have a wand."

“Genitals,” clarified Cabal. “He didn’t have genitals.” Upon reflection, it was possible he had barked the words with excessive force and volume. He lowered the finger he had pointed accusingly at them. “He was a eunuch,” he elucidated weakly.

“You must admit, Johannes, he didn’t have a wand either." 

He restrained himself, with difficulty, from pursuing her down the rabbit hole of that conversation. “Enough chat. We are not here for afternoon tea."

"Although that would have been lovely, Johannes...." Zarenyia interjected.

"You don't eat cakes," interrupted Cabal, sidetracked against his will. "And I am not disposed to round up your favoured edibles." He bit off the words. "Nor would it, then, be a _tea party_. Might we focus for one brief minute?” 

She tapped over the floor towards the seats, but an end table snagged in a few of her legs and was sent spinning at the wall. She sat down on the rug next to the love seat, drawing her legs close around and under her body. “Do you mind, Leonie, dear?” She gestured her to the seat. Leonie glanced at Cabal, who was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed. Zarenyia held out her hand for Leonie's and when that extremity had been haltingly placed in her own soft grip, bent and licked a line down the inside of Leonie’s forearm. Leonie’s eyes widened. She wasn’t precisely sure how she felt about that. Cabal took half a step forward then halted. The devil had stopped paying attention to Leonie and was looking into the middle distance.

"You met someone bad, Leonine.” Cabal opened his mouth to correct her, but she cut him off. “Stop interrupting, sweety. Watch carefully. Never mind him,” she said, her attention returning to Leonie. “You got a new pet. Or perhaps a partner in crime?” She squinted at Leonie’s eyes. "No, it isn't picking your shade of lipstick in the morning, not yet, but give it time. It'll be all over you, soon.”

“You don’t mean to say it’s spreading,” Leonie said.

“Oh, most certainly. I don’t know what it was to begin with, but it likes where it is just fine, and it’s weaving all its bits in with your bits.” She trailed a slow hand down Leonie’s arm, leaving a trail of gooseflesh. "If you leave it alone, nature will take its course. Or unnature, or whatever Johannes would like to call it. He’s terribly clever with names and things, you know. What are you clever with?"

“No small talk.” Cabal watched from the door with his arms crossed.

“Well, something gave it a nice little goose - not the kind with wings, you know,” she clarified with a touching earnestness, "but some magic or emotion sped it up. Have you wanted to murder anyone lately, sweetheart? You taste a bit like it.” She dabbed a pink tongue to Leonie’s wrist again and breathed in through her mouth, untangling the scents. “You taste like all kinds of desires, really.” She bent a little closer to Leonie, their breath mixing in the air between them.

Cabal cleared his throat meaningfully. The devil’s head snapped in his direction and she huffed at him. “Oh, I wasn’t really going to, you know.” 

“You dibbed,” he said dryly, much to Leonie’s confusion.

The devil smiled with reluctant amusement. “My dib is my bond.” Cabal didn’t quite smile back in a way that arrested Leonie’s attention for a moment. But Zarenyia turned back to Leonie, rearranging a few legs. “Your little visitor there: it gets into your head-things and changes them about. All it can do right now is work with your humanity - human emotions, human urges. And on that topic, Leonine...."

"Never mind that topic.” Cabal was getting twitchy. He, oddly, didn’t doubt Zarenyia’s intention to honour her promise, but it was all a little too cozy. He didn’t like the wide-eyed way Miss Barrow was looking at the devil.

Zarenyia rolled her eyes prettily. “It will change your body too, I think. It might take time, but eventually you’ll wind up as some sort of devil or demon. I don’t know if it’s ever happened before. But then, I don’t pay much attention to things like that. Anyway,” she concluded, patting Leonie’s shoulder, "don’t believe everything you hear about us, Leonie darling. I murder people too. Well, I sort of eat them, but it comes to much the same thing. It's always nice to know people who share one's interests." 

“You can give Leonie a devil’s guide to liquidation later."

“Can I?” Zarenyia brightened and took Leonie’s hand.

“No. Now what would you do if you wanted to get it out of her without lopping her arm off?"

“Well…” She considered. “I might try talking to it?"

“It wasn’t talkative. It may not have a mind."

“Find someone else it wants more?” Leonie shook her head politely but firmly.

“Kill it?"

“Naturally, but how? I killed the original creature in her arm, once she removed it, and it is still affecting her somehow."

"Are you sure you killed it?"

"Don't be ridiculous. I..." He had shot it. With normal, though large, bullets. The demon had vanished, hadn't it? Of course it was dead.

“Dead things don’t grow, Johannes, not even demons. And demons are never mindless. Tell me more about the other one, the one that almost killed you."

Leonie and Cabal told the story of their adventures in Twiccian's quarters. They interrupted each other and quibbled about details, but Zarenyia was on the edge of her seat, metaphorically (none of the chairs were proportioned for a spider-woman). She crowed when Leonie refused to leave her doomed necromancer. Her eyes sparkled and she wriggled in arachnid glee when the oddly proportioned black toothy creature manifested, summoned by the veined thing that had burrowed beneath Cabal’s skin. Her enthusiasm waned when Cabal insisted on repeating his conversation with the monster in pedantic detail but revived when Leonie, in a coup de théâtre, stole the mark, saving Cabal and making herself the object of the creature’s frustrated violence. “This is just splendid. And then what?” She gasped when Leonie tore the presumed symbiont from her arm, enduring agonies with the tenacity of the Barrows. Zarenyia patted Leonie’s arm solicitously, as if it must still pain her. Leonie shivered, and Cabal cleared his throat again. But at the vanquishing of the creature, the devil became distracted.

“I don’t think it was a demon."

“It was definitely a demon."

“I think it was a devil."

“What’s the difference?” Leonie interjected. 

“So many people don’t know, dear. We devils are a little more… ourselves. We aren’t part of that demonically dull army, for one thing, and while we technically owe Satan allegiance…." she shrugged, a charming roll of her rounded shoulders under angora. “We aren’t really fighters, mostly. We don’t get orders, and some of the rules don’t apply. We’re free agents. That sounds like your friend there, the kittenish one."

Catlike, thought Cabal. Hmm. “Does that have any bearing on Leonie’s infection?"

“It might. We don’t follow all the rules,” she added with a slow smile at Leonie, “so some of your suppositions may be wrong. Was the symbiote what you thought it was, for example?"

“What should we do?” asked Leonie. 

"I haven't the faintest, I'm afraid," and she really did look sorry. “But must you do anything? I like you already and Johannes here could take us on all sorts of adventures, and maybe you could finally persuade him out of his trousers.” Cabal was mid-swallow, and he choked. He turned an uneven colour. Zareniya continued. "We could have the nicest times together. I’m almost entirely sure it would be more fun than whatever you’re doing now. Although it has been a terribly long time since I did any of the things you do.” She frowned, a single line appearing precisely between her delicately arching brows.

"That is quite enough for now. We must bid you farewell, Madam Zareniya."

"Is it? Silly thing, consecutive time. Next time" she purred, dividing a look between them, "we must have a tea party, just us three.” She bent down to give Leonie a quick, hard embrace. "It was lovely meeting you. And consider what I said. You may not find a way out of this, but that needn't be so bad. Get Johannes to call me if you want me." And she tapped back into her circle, blew Leonie a kiss, and vanished.

The room seemed very empty. "She's charming, isn't she."

"Yes. She also...." Cabal cast about for a way of restating Zarenyia's preferred description of her own modus operandi, 'shagging to death,' in English he would find acceptable. "She is a sort of succubus."

"Hm, yes, I could have figured that out myself, even if you hadn't told me at the introduction. I'm not normally so interested in women, particularly not spider women. But even apart from that. She was nice."

“No.” Cabal’s tone was solid, like stone. "She liked you. She is not _nice_. Her body count is far higher than Jones', you know." And, he thought, she was rather nice, considering all that.

"Well. At least they went happy?"

He eyed her, trying to decide if she was making a joke.


	7. In which a message arrives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cabal and Leonie argue about the task at hand, and Cabal arms himself.

It was three-thirty in the morning and Cabal was writing when Leonie joined him. She walked to the edge of the light from the oil lamp. He searched her eyes for a topaz glint and found nothing. She was wearing a voluminous quilted garment, a bathrobe tied tight at the waist. Why was she up? “Did you dream?"

“No. I’ve barely slept. But I haven’t dreamed for two nights.” She drifted around the room, grazing the edge of the lamplight. She inspected the cigarette lighter, the framed portrait of the queen, the lumpy bronze cherub on the gas bracket. Cabal suppressed a twitch as she passed behind his chair and wandered to the casements. He was unused to working with someone in the room. With an effort of will he blanked out the rustles and clicks of her fidgeting and absorbed himself in an analysis of coagulation reversal in alchemically preserved bodies.

“Do you suppose the kitchen is still open?"

He gouged a punctuation mark into his document. “Wrath, sloth, gluttony: are you making the rounds of all seven, Miss Barrow?"

This shut her up. He was considering whether to include a footnote on venomous anticoagulants when the silence was broken again.

"Will I turn into a devil?” She was standing in the middle of the room, turned towards him with her hands loosely clasped, like a singer about to perform. The honest fear in her face pinned him to the chair.

He snorted derisively at the idea. "No. Your problem is trifling, and you have me.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Zareniya seemed impressed by my problem."

“I’m not."

She nodded and let her hands fall to her sides. "What do we do next, then?"

"I'll decide in the morning."

“I would like to discuss it now.” Her tone made it clear that they could discuss it or argue.

Cabal looked longingly at his summary but capped his pen and slipped the papers into their portfolio. He turned his attention to Leonie. “I would rather not tell you. We both know it might be curled up in your head right now, listening. Certainly something is."

“You’re planning to engage it directly somehow, aren’t you? You’re going to summon it?"

He assented reluctantly. “We have exhausted the chemical possibilities, at least the ones worth my time. An aggressive engagement of the original creature is called for. I will summon the devil - or demon, I am not entirely convinced - deal with it, and we will each go home."

“And when you say ‘deal with it’,’ you mean…?"

“I will not say."

“You aren’t planning to fight it, are you?” The doubt in her voice was unflattering.

“Not necessarily."

“Whatever you do, you’re doing it on my behalf, Johannes. I need to know.’ She started to pace. "It’s evil. I don’t know what Zareniya may or may not be, but that thing, the monster from Twiccian’s quarters, was evil. I don’t think any good can come of bargaining with it."

Privately, Cabal thought she was right. He knew several ways to obtain favours from demons. Most of them wished to buy souls. Cabal emphatically did not wish to trade in souls, but some demons also performed services in an attempt to gain trust and to display the goods they had on offer: something like the free consultation offered by plastic surgeons and lawyer. Cabal had occasionally taken advantage of this, but he doubted it would be sufficient.

For larger favours, or for the demons who do not care for souls, one must have something to offer. Demons are given to feuding with rivals, and they are willing to contract for mortals’ services. It was not something Cabal had pursued, but he knew of it. Then again, there were some limited ways of causing the creatures pain. He was, in fact, still a little fuzzy on how he would extract this favour from an entity who loathed him so vigorously. Surely there was something it wanted, or something he could turn to his advantage.

He did not try to refute her points. "I already have one implausibly ambitious goal. If you want a morally simple cure, you can devote your own life to finding it."

“I can’t. I’ve no time. Zareniya and I will be swapping tips on chitin-polishing soon.” She tried to hold Cabal’s eyes with her own. "I need you to think of something else.” When he shook his head and turned back to his portfolio, she stepped forward and sank to her knees by his chair, looking up at him and resting a hand on the table, hemming him in. Her uncanny eyes held his. "I don’t have the expertise, but I know you can do it. When faced with an obstacle, you improvise, usually brilliantly! Ornithopters. Rigged explosives. Origami, for heaven’s sake. I know you can do it again if you try.” Persuasion gave way to a hint of irritation as she spoke.

“On the occasions you mention, I had excellent reasons for such risky expedients. No, you have no expertise, but worse, you’ve got no stomach. You can’t bob along as if you were the heroine of a cheap romance, expecting an answer to appear from the clouds. The world is dangerous,’ he said, and the nasty hint of satisfaction faded from his voice, "and if you truly want something, you must be dangerous, too."

She turned her face away. The lamplight fell on her amber-gold hair, loose for the night. “This is a terrible idea, Cabal. It’s dangerous and it’s wrong. If I can’t persuade you out of it, I’ll leave.”

“Isn’t that a bit extreme? What about your chitin?" asked Cabal with heavy sarcasm.

"If this is happening to me, if I am changing, I need to…. I can’t afford to start cutting corners. I don’t trade favours with demons. I’ll get dad to commit me somewhere so I don’t hurt anyone. If you think of anything, write.” She stood.

"Are you trying to back out of our agreement?” Cabal was confused.

Leonie walked towards her room. "I won't be in any condition to fulfill my end. Of course, you haven’t either. Not one of your conspicuous successes, Holmes.”

"If this is some tawdry psychological trick,’ he called as she crossed the suite, "I'm not impressed by your studies. Leaving is not an option.' He paused and let that sink in. "Do not play stupid; you must see you have no choice. Stowing you in a sanatorium will not serve, not if this takes hold physically as well as mentally."

She had stopped, her back still straight with indignation, and she slowly turned back. “Damn. Damn you, you’re right. It was a stupid idea."

“Yes, it was. If you had seen Zareniya cut through a pack of armed guards, you wouldn’t have considered it. "

“Fine. We’ll do it tomorrow."

“No, I will do it tomorrow, and you will stay here.’ He interrupted her first word. "Summoning requires absolute precision. It is frighteningly easy to misplace a syllable or smudge a symbol. I wouldn’t take you to a… a tea dance in your current state, let alone a summoning.” He saw her eyebrow arching and hurried on before she could entertain herself with his ill-chosen rhetoric. “This is different. It will be like containing a man-eating tiger with a garden fence; possible, just barely, but I can allow no variables."

"Oh well, I’ll just sit up here and do needlepoint, then. You did such a good job of dealing with that creature last time, after all."

Cabal did not reply, just stared at Leonie stonily.

“I need your help,” she repeated.

“And yet you will not take my advice. You can stay here while I help you, or I can go.”

She looked him dead in the eyes. Her anger faded, and in its place was a simple appeal. “I’ll accept any measures you think necessary, but I must be there. Cabal… would you be content to sit in a hotel suite while your life was being decided elsewhere?"

Something in him agreed. Of course Leonie would try to do this herself, and she had a right. But she also had a devil in her head. He recalled the flash of reflective pupils in his darkened room; he recalled her face distorted and taut with rage. “If my presence gave every promise of making a bloody hash of the situation, I would take the first train out of town.’ She snorted with derision.

Also" - it would have been so much easier not to tell her - "I do not need your permission. I could pat your hand, agree, and go ahead with the plan the first moment you fell asleep."

She thought for a moment. “But why would you go to the trouble, Cabal?"

For a moment, he cast about for an answer. "What kind of being would you become?"

"I haven't any idea."

"Neither have I. I know almost nothing of devils, but I would be unwilling to assume your good-will.” He tried for a persausive tone. "It is far safer, far better to cure you, with or without your permission."

She hissed between her teeth. “It would be safer to kill me now, cabal. Less risk to you and to your precious project and a sure cure for me."

“Oh, stop being so dramatic. Yes, it is dangerous, but I am very good at this. It is a reasonable risk, if you aren't there to muck it up."

“You don’t want me there because I might oppose your plans. You don’t care what filthy little bargains you make, do you? Satan - Twiccian - this abomination - you’re open for business with anyone or anything."

Cabal’s limited patience had long since run out. “If you are buying, you need to deal with those who are selling. I will make no apologies...."

"Now there's a shock."

"...No apologies whatsoever for doing what I must. Or, in this case, for doing what. you. need."

“Huckster."

“Prig."

“Felon."

“Amateur.” They glared at each other, suddenly realizing how childish they sounded. Cabal shook his head and turned with exaggerated seriousness to his notes. Leonie sat down on the loveseat, still furious and not very proud of her own repartee. She picked up Cabal’s perfectly folded newspaper from the previous day and scanned the headlines, scarcely reading them at first. She felt sick. She didn’t want to stay for this, but she couldn’t go. Everything he did became morally dubious, dangerous, and wilfully contrary to every moral she had.

She glanced at the horoscope, wondering under which astrological sign Cabal had been born. Was he more bull-headed or scorpion-tailed? Cancer, possibly; she pictured a blue-eyed crab scuttling along the icy depths, pinching, hoarding little pebbles for reasons of its own, cracking lesser things open for their meat.

Her reluctant smile faded as she read the item about the naked madmen found wandering through the suburbs.

Cabal was deeply absorbed in his writing. He heard Leonie’s sharply indrawn breath. It took him half a moment to realize what must have happened. He cursed himself for leaving the paper lying around: stupid, stupid. What else would happen?

“I know these men.... They’re….” She paused. "You did this, didn't you? They found two men stumbling naked, laughing and howling, and the police want to know who they are."

Cabal felt an odd internal writhing; he had a sudden flash of memory: Leonie gawking at the revenant in his cellar laboratory, and his feeling of being caught in something shameful and loathsome. "Yes. You were licking your wounds at home. To risk a cliché, they knew too much."

His tone was an affront. “You went after the guards."

“Yes. The guards from the Dee Society. The ones who aided and abetted your kidnapping, detention, and torture. The ones who had compiled detailed notes on my activities. Them.'

Leonie had allowed herself to think that the guards had faded gratefully into obscurity or had, at worst, rejoined some head office somewhere. “And that gives you the right to... You are such a thug, Cabal. What did you do?"

"The right?’ He was incredulous. "I had a need. Yes it is disgusting and so on, but at least they are alive! Possibly not in the best of shape,” he interrupted himself. "A half-hour in an enclosed space with the smoke of Radix pedis diaboli, and they can't tell you their own names, but neither,” and he returned to his theme, “can they lead anyone to me. Or you. There's no need to get so exercised over a simple deprivation of their mental faculties."

He seethed. Thug! Shouldn’t she be pleased? They were out of the way, amply punished, and not dead. Except for her precious due process, he failed to see how the situation could have been solved more neatly or humanely. It had been a bother, taking them alive, exposing them to the smoke, and then releasing them into the surrounding area, but his conscience was fairly clear. He had congratulated himself that both he and Leonie were safe. He had not removed the men's clothing; that little whim must have taken them after he departed.

"Is this why you got your soul back? To do things like this?"

"No. But I cannot do my work with threats at my back. The Dee society is one such threat, and it is now a little further behind me. I hope you don't expect me to believe you weep for them."

He was all the the more startled when a jagged sob erupted from Leonie. She clapped a hand over her mouth as if the convulsion had taken her by surprise, too. “Shit.” Her voice cracked on the syllable, and she sobbed into her hand a second and third time.

Cabal frowned with perplexity. "They would have done as much surgically at some of the best institutions."

“They were mine, necromancer. Not yours."

Cabal plucked a microscopic piece of lint from his lapel. "Whose were they?"

Her hands were splayed claws, denting the cushions of the loveseat in ten places. "Its. Mine. I can't tell.' Her eyes sought blindly along the ceiling. "I can't tell. Cabal, get me to the circle.” She stood uncertainly, hands held a little out, as if ready to resist or clutch tight.

Cabal moved immediately. He seized Leonie by the shoulders - he was fairly sure he had her as well as a few yards of thick quilted bathrobe - steered the bundle into her room and shoved her into the circle. Her fall was broken by the bed, but that was incidental. “Miss Barrow?"

She seemed dazed, righting herself and adjusting her robe before answering. “Still here.”

“What was that?"

“Give me a moment. Give me a moment.’ She took a deep breath and released it. "How the Hades should I know?”

He relaxed a fraction. As cursing went, it was too delicate for a denizen of the Pit. “Does the circle help?"

She looked him in the eye. “Yes.' She was more collected already. “No other questions?"

“It’s too late for that. I will divine the best location. You will try not to cause a public scene, invade my privacy, or turn into a devil while I do so. Can you manage that?"

She forced a small smile. “Maybe. I make no promises.” He turned his back and did not see her face change.

***

He went to his bedroom to cast lots. It did not, strictly speaking, require solitude, but he felt foolish doing it in front of Leonie. He cleared a space on the floor, but instead of continuing he sat in the overstuffed chair and thought. She had not agreed to stay in the suite yet, but she would. The progress of her condition was undeniable and rapid. He stowed the .22 pistol he had been carrying in his trouser pocket since arriving at the hotel, selected the gargantuan Webley from his luggage, inspected it moodily, and stowed it in his coat pocket. For once, the weight did not feel reassuring. He sincerely, truly, honestly hoped he would not need to use it.

He heard a knock on the door and rose to answer it. A minute later, he tossed an envelope onto Leonie’s bed. “We have a deadline."

Herr Schmidt;  
We regret that this hotel will have to relinquish the honour of your custom. One of the hotel cars will be available to transport you and your luggage at eleven-thirty tomorrow morning  
your servant,  
M. Ferriault

“Tonight, then?"

“Before dawn."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks for your patience; this chapter _fought_.


	8. In which Leonie is kissed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cabal tries to force a confrontation with a devil.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was _so_ much easier to write. Wish me luck for the ninth and final chapter.

Cabal closed the door. He was dressed for the street. He carried his Gladstone bag and he had the Webley ready to hand.

It was four-thirty in the morning, and the hotel was still quiet; he took the grand staircase to the ground floor, knowing the service stairs would be buzzing with hotel staff. The guests still slumbered, but breakfasts cooked in the cellars, and wake-up calls pulled on their uniforms.

Leonie was waiting in the suite. He had run out of time for argument or subterfuge, so she was unnarcotised.

He arrived in the lobby; turning away from the exterior doors he walked deeper into the hotel. Cabal moved through the dim hallways and windowless assembly rooms like a spider: black, silent, and swift. They were a shadowy succession of carpets, tables, bony chairs, and mirrors upon mirrors reflecting his unvarying progress. He knew where he needed to go. He found the three sets of broad double doors, cream picked out in gold. He opened one without a sound and then he stood in the great space.

It was the hotel’s grand ballroom; enough space for a hundred couples to waltz or _schottisch_ on the inlaid parquet, their steps and turns reflected a thousandfold by the framed mirrors. Lights would have blazed from the sconces, illuminating the _trompe d'oil_ ceiling. The ceiling was dark now, deeply shadowed beyond the chandeliers. He had been very pleased to find that the divination pointed to a spot so close, and so spacious. He would need the elbow room before long. He plucked an occasional table from against the wall, dusted it, and lined up his tools on its marble surface.

*****

Dim light was leaking through the milky glass of the clerestory windows when Cabal pronounced the last syllables of the summoning. Nothing happened.

Cabal waited. Nothing happened. The damned creature had taken its time manifesting in Twiccian’s quarters; perhaps it was indulging a similar whim here? But no, there was none of the oppressive thickening or throbbing of the air he remembered. He knew he had done everything perfectly. He had the name in his memory, he had drawn the sigils and pronounced the syllables immaculately. He was at a crossroads, it was night. Was it waiting for an invitation? Rising fear. He gripped the edge of the table and bowed his head. He had several plans from here, but each involved the creature’s presence. What could he do next?

He doubted if Leonie could return home with safety; the dreadful rapidity of the infection meant that she and her father would be at risk. The thought of going upstairs and explaining his failure was sickening. He had intentionally preserved his self-assurance in front of Leonie, despite the failure of one plan after another. After all, her mental state might be retarding the advancement of the change, and he had not wanted her afraid or despairing. There had been no reason to despair until he had failed a simple fucking summoning. He took a deep breath. He had disappointed people before. He hoped she wouldn’t fall apart; they’d have to start packing soon, or come up with a plan to deal with _Maître d'hôtel_ Ferriault.

He would try it again. There was just time. He raised his head, suddenly watchful; there was a movement in the still air of the room. In the shifting grey light behind him he saw a pale figure closing the door - a female figure. He really should have drugged her. She walked towards him, her feet barely making a sound on the sprung floor.

“Magus.” He heard a smile in her voice and soured.

“Your childish taunts are badly timed, Miss….” the sibilant died away. He snatched the Webley, turned tail, and ran.

About twelve feet, to the interior of the carefully scribed demon- and devil-proof circle. It had originally been intended to keep one in, but it would be just as effective at keeping one out. Then again, his professional judgement had not been infallible recently. He thanked his own superior planning for the Webley that was in his hand and pointing at Leonie Barrow’s forehead.

How had this happened? He had summoned the creature…. He had summoned the creature. He had _fought_ Leonie to summon the creature, actually. And when it was close, whipping through the aether, the human portal had beckoned more urgently than his. She may even have been close by, even outside the door, when he pronounced the final words, brought by whispered suggestion or by sheer Barrow cussedness.

“Magus. Am I not convincing?”

Cabal’s upper lip was curled in disgust. In his career, he had seen one avatar of Lucifer, dozens of demons in their natural forms, and more rubbery, slimy, froglike Deep Ones than one could shake several driftwood sticks at. He had been to R'lyeh. Twice. He was no stranger to the obscene, the amorphous, even the eldritch. He had a few neat non-Euclidean diagrams in his notes somewhere. It is with this in mind that you should consider that Cabal found Leonie’s possession… unpleasant. Provoking a measure of revulsion. Nasty. “You need to hide the eyes."

It flirted Leonie’s lashes over its own horizontally slitted eyes. “But aren’t they nice?” it said, in an assumed imbecilic tone. It approached the circle and stopped with Leonie's toes playfully lined up at the edge. “What are you afraid of, Magus? I haven’t any claws, or teeth to speak of, and I doubt Miss Barrow’s stomach would accommodate very much of you at all.” It had changed into daywear, but even Cabal could see it hadn't got it quite right. The ruffle on the blouse was bunched under the little jacket, and the shoes must have been from the first night's dinner ensemble.

"I doubt you would be here if you were no better armed than that."

"Well, perhaps you're right.' It extended Leonie's hand, and a flicker of blue flame played across it. "One doesn't bang around the pit for several millennia without picking up a few tricks."

"Impressive," murmured Cabal, ostentatiously suppressing a yawn. He was privately glad of the protection of the circle. That flame, produced without props or incantations, proved some magical ability. If the creature did have thousands of years of experience to back that ability up, as it well might have, the Webley would not be infallible protection.

But he could not use the gun. There was not the smallest hesitation in his face or tremor in the hand that aimed it at Leonie’s head, but he would not pull the trigger.

Its eyes focussed on the weapon for the first time. “Oh, mortal, would you really? I suspect I’d just drift on home, like last time. And Leonie would likely follow along. Leonie, that’s her name. Miss Barrow. And you are… Cabal. Johannes,” it added in a mocking tone, pouting Leonie’s lips. “My body wasn’t real, that time. This one is. Real body, real life, real soul in here somewhere - who knows what I can do? I’m very interested in trying it all out.' It stepped back and paced slowly outside the circle. “And you’ll have to leave some time. Take a risk on what I can do. Run now, boy, and I’ll give you a head start. But don’t take anything with you. Just run as fast as you can."

Cabal did not run or lower the Webley. It continued.

“After you broke the connection in Twiccian’s lair, I was pitched back into the Pit. But. Leonie had a thread of me still within her, somewhere. It grew, it took hold, it reached out to me - the connection was a tendril, stroking my mind - so tenuous it took me time to notice it and realize what it was. More time to follow it back. More time to reach out, take hold, and pull myself in."

Cabal was temporarily distracted by the new data. “There is no symbiosis, then, no separate creature? It was a part of you?"

“My domestic arrangements are none of your concern.” It assumed a prim look.

“What do you want to let her go?"

“I beg your pardon?"

Cabal grimaced. “Would you take someone else?"

“I hardly see how it would be accomplished.’ The creature looked put out. “It was a great deal of trouble getting this far with Leonie. You aren’t offering yourself, are you?"

“That… that wasn’t my first plan."

“No, I thought not. Listen. I will keep her; but I could be persuaded to let you go.' It raised a forearm to smooth Leonie’s hair, paused, and used its fingers instead, patting down some wayward strands. “And a very reasonable price. I just want the book."

“Ah. That is enough. Madame?"

One of the chandeliers crawled a little to the left. There was a short writhing, and it descended, first slowly and then sailing down through the air on a rope of silk. Zarenyia's arms were wide open, she had a wicked smile on her face, her hair was fluttering. "It’s hard to kiss your sweetheart,’ she crooned “when the last kiss means good-bye….” She dropped lightly to the dance floor in front of Leonie’s form; she caught her in a one-armed embrace, lowered her lips to those of her startled prey, and gave her a thorough kiss.

Cabal caught himself staring and averted his widened eyes. As Zarenyia lifted her mouth from Leonie’s, she smiled dreamily and retracted the white translucent fang into her palate. Leonie fell through her arms to the floor, out cold. A drop of blood leaked from her mouth. Cabal turned a forbidding look on the devil, who tossed her head.

"It's healed already, probably. And she'll have lovely dreams. Did you find out what you wanted? I guessed you were still trying to pry things out of it, even though the plan did change a bit. I don’t mind. It was much nicer kissing Leonie than some cat-devil.' She grinned cheerily. "I always have such fun when we’re out, Johannes."

Cabal had briefly been distracted by Zarenyia's entrance, but he had worked several things out while she was speaking. “Yes. The book. We must burn the book immediately."


	9. In which Zarenyia goes home alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The finale.

Leonie slept on the dusty dance floor, a little smile on her lips.

Zarenyia tiptoed over and bent down. "I’ll keep her safe while you nip off and do that.” Beneath her, Leonie stretched in her sleep and… purred. Sort of. Zareniya’s smile widened, and her eyes brightened.

“No. No, I do not think that would be wise,’ added Cabal doubtfully. “Go. I will take her back to the suite."

Zareniya picked up Leonie in a few legs and flexed her spinnarets. “Shall I…?”

“No!"

“Well, whyever not? If it wakes up, it could flambé you with a gesture."

“Yes, but….”

“Be sensible. What will you do if she wakes up? In fact, I’d better come along in case she needs another dose."

“She should be out for hours."

“A human would be. I’ve no clue about the comedy duo, dearie." She prodded Leonie with a claw.

Cabal debated. Taking a delerious Leonie up to the room alone would be easy. He wouldn't even need to make excuses; she was supposed to be a raving drug-addict. Introducing a nine-foot tall spider-devil into the situation seemed imprudent, as neither the staff nor the guest stairs would be empty by now. But her argument had merit. Outside the building? That might just be possible. The sun had not yet risen, and she would be able to handle any little interruptions on her own.

“Fine. You’ll have to take her up the exterior walls, though."

“Right-o. Which way?” Spinnerets flexing, Zareniya spun Leonie’s limp body and wrapped her in silk.

“I’ll help you out the north side of the building. Quickly.” Cabal collected his bag and tools but didn’t bother to erase the summoning circle inscribed on the ballroom floor. It wasn’t as if he could return to the hotel anyway. Zarenyia stowed Leonie’s body under her cephalothorax, and they left the ballroom.

He had not anticipated how their progress through the halls and assembly rooms would be hampered by Zareniya’s size. Cabal was soon tired of extracting her from potted palms and chairs. She tried edging by tables, but she soon decided the walls were less trouble - until she sent mirrors crashing and light fixtures smashing and sparking.

“Will you stop making that abominable racket? You will bring the entire hotel down upon our heads.” It was certainly difficult to understand how the group of breakfasting businessmen in the Hanover room had failed to hear their approach, but they showed every sign of surprise. Cabal beat two of the panicking stockbrokers unconscious. He arose to find that Zareniya had kissed another and was having intimate congress with the fourth.

“Madam!” Cabal was deeply shocked.

“Nothing you haven’t seen before, poppet."

“Stop this instant. Or at least… put Miss Barrow down. It’s indecent."

“Is that all that’s bothering you? Here, take her.” A few legs flipped Leonie’s mummified form in his direction, and Cabal scrambled to catch her before her head hit the floor. He called over his shoulder. “We have a schedule. Less artistry, more dispatch."

“Do you ever wonder where those unpleasant stereotypes about Germans come from, Johannes?” But the legs in the city suit spasmed one last time, a final ecstatic, despairing moan dying away as his body hit the floor.

A minute later they were breaking through an exterior window. Zarenyia didn’t want to risk her legs, which she claimed were “quite delicate, darling.” So Cabal had smashed out several panes with a heavy floor lamp and was working on the grids when he heard a familiar but unloved voice coming down the corridor. “This is ridiculous. You must investigate before dragging me from the front desk.” A voice with a faint French accent.

Cabal made frantic gestures to Zareniya to get out the window immediately, but instead of employing the spider's repellant quickness, she watched his increasingly urgent waving and carrying gestures with absorbed interest. She supported one elbow with an arm and put her chin in her hand.

“Go. Go!” he muttered at last.

“Oh, is _that_ what…."

“Martin, _mon enfant,_ you must learn to take some initiative with the guests or you will never….” Mr. Ferriault rounded the corner accompanied by a tall, broad young man wearing a bellboy’s uniform and a hangdog expression. For a breath, for two breaths, all five of them were frozen in a _tableau vivant_ of horrified discovery. Cabal, bronze floor lamp abandoned by his feet, arms outstretched imploringly at the three-meter-tall woman-spider with the silk-swathed person lashed to her huge arachnid underbody. One of the businessmen groaned from the adjoining room.

It broke the spell. In the space of two more breaths M. Ferriault put aside surprise. He put aside horror. He packed away curiosity and self-preservation. “Martin,’ he said, “empty the main service stairs. And the hallway to the Ludwig suite."

“During breakfast?” Young Martin’s reserves of shock and alarm had not been emptied by the scene before him.

Ferriault’s expression remained mild, but the young man fled to accomplish his task. The _Maitre_ took a breath, and in a tone that was an apotheosis of polite professionalism, he asked Cabal a question. “Will mademoiselle be accompanying you to your suite, Herr Schmidt?” He indicated Zareniya with a nod.

Cabal closed his mouth. He straightened. He nodded once. “And Frau Schmidt," he added, nodding at Leonie.

The iron control of a good hotel employee held. "Of course."

Ferriault strode to a wall and produced a large set of keys. He opened a door painted the same colour as the wall; its handle and hinges had been invisible in the opulent froufrou of the decor. “You will please follow me, sir and… and lady."

The door led to a service hallway busy with the aromas of bacon and kippers but empty of all life. Zareniya had to squeeze at first, but it opened out at the staircase and she was able to struggle up.

They saw not a soul on their way up the fusty stairwell. Ferriault led the way, back straight, not so much as looking back at Zareniya or appearing to hear her running commentary.

He opened a door into the public hallway and led the three to the suite. He paused outside the door. “Herr Schmidt,’ he began, pronouncing the alias without a hint of irony. “In view of Frau Schmidt’s indisposition, I must press you to extend your stay until tomorrow. The hotel could not forgive itself if she suffered ill effects from the move.' In this courteous speech, there was a gentle gravity that would have made an angel weep. Cabal could respect a man so clearly at the summit of his art; he nodded gravely in acceptance. “And Herr Schmidt? We must not see you, Frau Schmidt, or Mademoiselle,’ and here he bowed slightly at Zareniya, who dimpled, “again. Ever.' The last word was delivered without obvious emphasis, yet there was something about it that attracted Cabal’s complete attention. He nodded again. “Enjoy the remainder of your stay."

Ferriault walked away in the direction of the main elevator. Even Zarenyia watched him go.

The moment passed, and Cabal had the key in the lock. “Can you fit through the door?"

“I’ll manage.” It was not notably graceful, but after giving Leonie back to Cabal and pushing a little, with a great surge she managed it. Elated, she bounced over and through some end tables and a hassock, then swatted the loveseat aside to sit.

Cabal appeared from his room and dropped a small crate to the floor. He threw himself upon it with a claw hammer. Wood splintered, nails skittered across the parquet. When it was broken open to reveal a squarish parcel, he donned two gauntlets, then stopped dead. "The devil thinks I can use the book to pull it out of Leonie."

Zarenyia sighed. When were they going to get to the good part?

“But what if Jones is dead? Or… the portal took him out of this dimension, I am sure of it. What if the devil has lost its connection to him?"

Zarenyia nodded and tapped a leg on the floor.

“Listen to me! If I open this, it is possible nothing will happen."

She yawned and smiled politely.

"But it is just possible…. for the love of… Zarenyia, it could manifest here in the room and kill us all. Which will not solve any problems."

“Her breathing has changed, Johannes. She’ll be awake soon. I could kiss her again, but… you’d really better decide."

“But I don’t know!”

He heard himself, grimaced, cursed, and tore the package open.

It was, of course, an unattractively bound copy of Simmonds’ Life of Darwin bound in scratchy green cloth with sharp corners. Cabal glared around the room for throbbing air and listened for thickening buzzes, but there was nothing. Either it had not worked, or Witchfinder Jones’ day was taking a sharp turn for the worse. An excessively flexible devil who had just suffered a severe personal disappointment is never a welcome acquaintance.

Cabal fanned the pages and carried the book to a surviving end table. He set it aflame with the cigarette lighter and dropped it in a metal wastepaper basket. When the flames had dropped to a smoulder, he picked out the spine and unburned fragments and relit each one. Finally, he tipped the ashes into the leather folder that had kept the book safely inert, wiped the basket out with his handkerchief, and dropped it into the folder, too. He resealed it, wrapped it carefully, and opened his flick knife.

Leonie’s swaddled form was on the loveseat. The silk parted under the blade, revealing a sleeping, drooling figure. She looked like Leonie. But how to tell?

The spider-devil picked up Leonie’s arm and licked it. She made a considering face and sucked one of Leonie’s fingers into her mouth, just to be sure. Cabal noticed his eyebrows were raised and lowered them. “Yes, I think it’s just her. The change has stopped.” Cabal raised Leonie’s eyelid up to find a normal pupil - enlarged, if anything, with darkness and Zarenyia's venom. He felt a corneal reflex under his thumb - an attempted blink.

“Right, well, I’m getting bored. I think I’ll head off.’ She fixed her hair, taking some care to get the little wisps arranged just right. The corners of her mouth were set. "But thanks awfully for inviting me. The kissing and fighting and shagging were lovely. But… but do call me up, darling. It gets so quiet.”

“You’re very welcome. Thank you for your assistance."

“Toodles.’ She looked at Leonie’s sleeping body. “But it might have been fun, mightn’t it? The two of us, devils together, and you visiting?”

****

Leonie tried to think. It was very, very difficult. She decided to ask Cabal about it. "How many things are wrong with me right now, m’boy?” She was on a couch. A very small couch.

Cabal scooped her up from the loveseat. “At least three. You are drugged to the gills with succubine venom. You have recently been possessed by a devil and/or demon. Your nerves have not been in the best state since your abduction. Shall I keep going?"

Her head bobbed with his steps. She considered this. "Good. That explains a number of things. Had m’worried.” She stifled a yawn in Cabal’s shoulder. “This… venom? Is marvellous stuff. Really super. Feeling rather....” It’s too bad my hands don’t work, she thought. She flung her head back, her face twisted in a sleepy leer. “You aren't so bad either. Is Razen… Zanen… Zarazenyia still here? No? Pity.”

Cabal kicked her door open. Her look of lecherous triumph took a second to dawn, quickly chased by perplexity. "There’s a good reason I’m not inviting you to bed, isn't there?"

Cabal grimaced. “Multitudinous reasons. Excellent ones. Legions of them. Sleep it off.” He dumped her on her bed.

“Knew-it.” He left the room. “Knew you could save the day, m’boy.” She was asleep before the springs stopped bouncing.


	10. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two friends, out on a walk.

Contrary to Cabal’s expectations, Leonie seemed fully recovered when she awoke. More than recovered, she was intolerably energetic and cheerful. She nearly danced out of the hotel into the cab, and once their business was finished at the train station she dragged him on a walk while they waited for their trains.

She had run into the first church she found and emerged even more pink-cheeked and smiling. She took Cabal’s arm without asking and tugged him out of the cemetery towards the park. They walked. After days confined to the hotel, they enjoyed the breeze and the reflection of the clouds on the water. Cabal did not saunter - he would probably sprain something - but his characteristic tension ebbed a little.

“Just so you know, Herr Cabal, I am fed up with being abducted, mentally attacked, imprisoned, drugged, and being otherwise deprived of my faculties. Do that part yourself, next time. Look, ducks!”

Several minutes later, Cabal remarked, “that is the location of the Tyburn gallows, just there. Thousands were hanged in the name of the king’s justice. It was considered a morally instructive spectacle."

“You can’t just enjoy a walk in a park, can you?” They were both thinking of the guards, now locked up in a London asylum. She wondered if she would visit them, and if she did, how she would feel. She was happy to throw stones at Cabal – figuratively speaking – but her own conscience wasn’t clear.

“Are you not a little relieved? Will you not sleep easier?” Yes, she admitted to herself, but - she shook her head. Cabal had never understood that she was more afraid of her own vengeful feelings than of anything the guards might do.

Now they marched along the footpath, arm in arm, not looking at each other. “What are you doing, Miss Barrow? You don’t approve, but you won’t go away. Can’t you make up your mind? Are you on my side or not?”

She thought about that for longer than he expected. “I avoid making up my mind about you.” She thought some more. She pulled her arm out of his, stopped, and looked out over the water. "Maybe it’s not my job to judge you?”

“How novel.” His tone was sour.

“Oh, shut up. What do you want? I don’t understand it either. I’m not sure you’re a good influence on me, for all that you keep coming in handy."

“ _Handy_?"

She talked over him. "But if you need an answer - look, here I am.’ Her sweeping gesture took in the park, the sky, the water, the two of them. "Not for everything, and not without misgivings, but here I am.” She put her arm through his, and they started back towards the train station.

It was Cabal’s turn to think. He tried to resolve something rational out of this statement. “But will you stop questioning my every move? Harassing me about minutiae?”

“Not a chance, my boy.” She patted his arm placatingly.

“You will not go away?”

“No.”

And they walked along the river path in silence, arm in arm, Cabal unconsciously shortening his strides to Leonie’s.


End file.
